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MY SECOND COUNTRY 



MY SECOND COUNTRY 

(FRANCE) By ROBERT DELL 



" La France de Voltaire et de Montesquieu — 

celle-la est la grande, la vraie France." 

— Anatole France, 



London: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
New York: JOHN LANE COMPANY, mcmxx. 



JQfc5r<? 



©ift 
KAY 8 ®^ 



TO A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE FRANCE OF 

THE FUTURE, MY INTERNATIONAL GRANDSON, 

GILLES-JACQUES SOURIAU, BORN ON THE 

ANNIVERSARY OF THE PARIS COMMUNE. 



CONTENTS 

Introduction vii 

CHAPTER I 

THE FRENCH CHARACTER . ..... 13 

British mistakes about France — The paradox of the 
French character — Individual and collective intelli- 
gence — The difference between Paris and France — 
The democratic spirit — Respect for authority — 
Social and political liberty — French intellectuahsm 
— French Chauvinism and British Imperialism. 

CHAPTER II 

PROBLEMS or RECONSTRUCTION .... 40 

France an agricultural country — The peasantry and the 
proletariat — Limitation of the family— Effects of 
the war on the population — Economic and financial 
situation — Should France become an industrial 
nation ? — Protection and its results — The colonial 
system — Economic Malthusianism — The Government 
and the profiteers — The power of finance. 

CHAPTER III 

THE ADMINISTRATIVE AND POLITICAL SYSTEMS . 73 

French institutions not democratic — The centralized 
administration — Examples of bureaucratic methods 
— The real rulers of France — The political police— 
The French Constitution — Secret Treaties — The 
French Parliament — Methods of election — The power 
of the Senate — Proposed constitutional reforms. 



iv CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV 

THE DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT AND ITS CAUSES. Ill 

Anti-parliamentarism — Causes of the decadence of Par- 
liament — Backwardness of social legislation — Neglect 
of economic questions — Powers of French landlords — 
Criminal procedure : the secret instruction — Influence 
of politics on the administration of justice — What 
the Third Republic has done — Secularization of the 
schools — Separation of Church and State — The 
Associations Law of 1901 — The Religious Orders — 
Present impotence of Parliament — The group system 
— Failure of the Radical Party — Fear of responsi- 
bility — Corruption in French politics : its causes — 
Arbitrary powers of the Executive — How deputies are 
corrupted — The choice between revolution and 
reaction. 

CHAPTER V 

RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION 164 

Mistakes of the Revolution chiefly due to external inter- 
ference — Jacobinism and the Terror — Causes of 
French militarism — Social and economic results of the 
Revolution — The abolition of the old provinces — 
Natural and mystical patriotism — Necessity of 
decentralization — M. Jean Hennessy's proposals. 

CHAPTER VI 

. SMALL PROPERTY AND ITS RESULTS . . .183 

"^he bourgeoisie and the peasants — Subdivision of 
property — Demoralizing influence of small property— 
The petit bourgeois spirit — Selfishness of the wealthy 
classes — Large and small landlords — Thrift — Eco- 
nomic results of small property — The fear of taking 
risks — Backwardness of French business methods — 
The banking system — The petit bourgeois spirit in 
national finance — Conservatism in practical matters 
of life — Lack of initiative and enterprise — Effects of 
small property on wages and salaries — Failure 
of jjeasant proprietorship — Obsolete agriciiltural 
methods — Waste of labour — Decrease of the rural 
population — The critical situation of agriculture — 
The great qualities of the peasants — Ideals of the 
proletariat^ — The intellectual bourgeoisie. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER VII 

SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM AND STATE CAPITALISM. 235 

Why France needs Socialism — Socialism and Etatisme — 
The railway system — Tramways and omnibuses — The 
postal service — State monopolies in practice — The 
pawnbroking monopoly — The vices of State Capital- 
ism — Reaction against Etatisme — The Syndicalist 
theory — The C.G.T. — Communist and individualist 
Anarchism — Reformist and revolutionary Socialism — 
Effects of the war on Socialism and Syndicalism — 
Revolutionary Socialism and Liberalism — The 
reaction in the bourgeoisie — Probability of revolution 
— French Socialists and direct action — The dictator- 
ship of the proletariat — Example of the Paris 
Commiine — The Federative Communist Republic — 
Realism of French Socialism — Mr. Wilson's failure 
and its results — The bourgeois proletariat — Dangers of 
the present situatioia. 

CHAPTER VIII 

BACK TO VOLTAIRE 289 

Voltaire the representative of the " True France " — The 
other France : Pascal, Chateaubriand, Joseph de 
Maistre — The Liberal Catholic movement : Lamen- 
nais, Montalembert, Lacordaire — Puritanism in 
French Catholicism — The non-religious character of 
the French — Political Catholicism — The Modernist 
movement : its failure — Identification of the Church 
with reaction — Catholic revival in the bourgeoisie — 
Bruneti^re — Decline of religious practice — Effect of 
the war on religion — Bergsonism and Pragmatism — 
The Church and M. Bergson — Henri Barbusse — The 
revival of Rationalism. 

Index 319 



INTRODUCTION 



The title of this book has not been chosen at 
random : it is Hterally true. France has been my 
home for more than twelve years, but it was already 
my second country long before I went to live there. 
Indeed I cannot remember a time when France had 
not a large place in my affections. Among my 
earliest recollections are the pictures of the Franco- 
German War of 1870 in the bound volumes of the 
Illustrated London News which we had at home. 
Perhaps my elders who showed and explained the 
pictures to me were themselves Francophile ; they 
must have been, or how should I at that early age 
have been filled, as I was, with enthusiasm for the 
cause of France and indignation at the wrongs that 
she had suffered ? Later on Victor Hugo and 
Swinburne intensified my love and admiration for 
France and gave it a more reasoned basis ; France 
became for me the country of the Revolution, the 
symbol of democracy and republicanism. Since 
then my opinions on almost every subject have 
changed more than once, as must the opinions of 
any man that has lived more than fifty years in this 
world, unless his existence has been that of a 
vegetable, but the enthusiasm for revolutionary 
and republican France has never changed or 
diminished. 

The love of France in the abstract took a concrete 
form as I came to know French people. I went to 
live in France of my own choice, not because any 



viii INTRODUCTION 

circumstances obliged me to do so. Since then it 
is almost too little to say that France has been my 
second country. When circumstances made me an 
involuntary exile in my native land, I found myself 
less at home there than in my adopted country. 
For I have not merely lived in France : I have lived 
with and among French people. Most foreigners 
that go to live in France fail through no fault of 
their own to get into close contact with the French 
people. Many of them remain in France for years 
without ever getting to know the French in their 
own homes, and mix almost entirely with other 
immigrants of their own nationality ; their ac- 
quaintance with Frenchmen is restricted to business 
or official relations. For the French, although far 
from inhospitable, are slow in making friends and 
reluctant to open their doors to strangers. 

It was, however, my good fortune to have several 
French friends — two or three of them even intimate 
— before I went to live in the country. I was, 
therefore, able soon to make more friends and from 
the first I have lived almost entirely in the society 
of French people. Moreover, although my home is 
in Paris, I have friends and acquaintances in many 
other parts of France, and they include people of 
various classes and opinions. I have intimate 
friends among the Parisian proletariat ^ and long 

^ Although it is true that the situation of the modern work- 
man is not identical with that of the Roman proletarius and 
that all workmen are not absolutely indigent, I agree with M. 
Emile Vandervelde (" Le Socia.hsme centre I'Etat," pp. 70-72) 
that there is no sufficient reason for abandoning a technical term 
which is convenient, universally understood and sanctioned by 
seventy years of usage. The proletariat was defined by Marx 
and Engels as " that class of modern workers who have no means 
of subsistence except in so far as they find work and who find 
work only so far as the work is profitable to capitalists." There 
are workers that do not belong to that class and some word is 
necessary to make the distinction. 



INTRODUCTION ix 

stays in various country districts have enabled me 
to know the peasants and that admirable body of 
men and women to whom France owes so much — 
the country school teachers. The more I know the 
French people the fonder I become of them. Like 
all human beings, they have the defects of their 
qualities, but they have one quality which makes 
them the most charming people in the world to live 
with — they understand the art of living. 

In these pages, which are intended to be a slight 
contribution to the study of some aspects of French 
life, attention will be drawn to certain defects, as 
they seem to me, in French institutions and 
methods. I shall make no apology for drawing 
attention to them. Their existence is recognized by 
all the thoughtful Frenchmen that I know, although 
they would not all agree as to their causes and 
possible remedies. Indeed, if I venture to write 
about them, it is only because I have been 
repeatedly urged to do so by French friends who 
have been good enough to say that my peculiar 
position enables me to combine the detachment of 
an outsider with some amount of inside knowledge. 
Their opinion is, no doubt, too flattering, but at 
least I can claim to speak with sincerity and 
sympathy. The first suggestion of a book of this 
kind was made to me before the war. So long as 
the war continued it would have been inopportune, 
but at this critical moment in the history of France, 
when she will need all her intellectual and 
materia] resources to recover from the terrible blows 
which the war has dealt her, it is useful to consider 
what changes may be necessary to the solution of 
the vast and difficult problem of reconstruction. 
The political situation in France appears to 
me to give every sign that she is nearing the end of 
a regime. I do not believe that the political 



X INTRODUCTION 

institutions which have now existed for nearly fifty 
years can survive, without radical alterations, the 
social and economic upheaval which the war has 
brought about in Europe. They have never worked 
satisfactorily, for they were falsified in their origin, 
and the war has revealed in a glaring light their 
fundamental inconsistencies. In some other than 
political respects France is behind the times and 
drastic changes are needed if she is to recover 
herself and hold her own in the world. Much may 
be hoped from the marvellous recuperative power 
of the French people, of which so striking an ex- 
ample was given after 1871 ; but the injury inflicted 
on France by the war of 1870 was trivial in 
comparison with that which the war just ended 
has inflicted upon her. All the good sense and all 
the intelligence of the French people will be needed 
to repair that injury. And this time, if the recovery 
is to be as complete as it was half a century ago, 
there must be a far more searching examination 
into economic and political conditions and far more 
drastic measures must be taken with abuses and 
with the obstacles to progress raised by the 
obscurantist conservatism of certain classes. If, in 
however small a degree, I can contribute to the 
necessary examination, I shall feel that I have 
repaid a fraction of the debt which I owe to the 
country which I have chosen as my home and in 
which I hope to spend the rest of my days. 

Robert Deli,. 

London, 29 September, 1919. 



MY SECOND COUNTRY 



MY SECOND COUNTRY 

CHAPTER I 

THE FRENCH CHARACTER 

British opinion in regard to France has com- 
pletely changed since the war. Before the war the 
French were popularly regarded in England as a 
frivolous people. Most Englishmen's knowledge of 
France was derived from trips to Paris, often 
undertaken for the purpose of indulging in 
amusements which their reputation for respect- 
ability and an observant conjugal eye prevented 
them from enjoying in London, Manchester, or 
Birmingham, although those places give just as 
many opportunities for them in a rather more 
sordid form. Nothing has amused me more than 
the comments of English friends on the immorality 
of France, comments made with a sublime un- 
consciousness of the fact that, if they found what 
they call immorality in Paris, it was for the reason 
that they would find it in any large town, namely, 
because they went to look for it. For them France 
was Paris ; and Paris was the Grand Boulevard, the 
showy restaurants, the Folies Bergere and the night 
cafes in the neighbourhood of the Place Pigalle. 
The French were, therefore, a people in the habit 
of sitting up in cafes half the night with hospitable 

13 



14 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

ladies on their knees. Hence the legend that the 
French were frivolous and dissolute. In fact, they 
are an extremely serious and hardworking people, 
less eager for amusements than the English and 
more capable of amusing themselves. Nowadays 
too many English people never seem happy without 
set amusement ; they must be at a theatre, a music- 
hall, or at least a cinematograph. The braying 
band in nearly every London restaurant betrays the 
sad fact that conversation is a lost art. In France it 
is still the amusement that all intelligent people 
like best, for in France even smart society has not 
killed conversation by declaring it " bad form " to 
talk about anything but golf or the idiosyncrasies 
of one's acquaintances. The French are gay, they 
are witty, but they are less frivolous than the 
English in the true sense of the term. Young 
Frenchmen perhaps took life too seriously even 
before the war ; they have had too much reason for 
taking it seriously during the last five years. 

According to popular legend before the war, the 
French were not only frivolous and immoral, they 
were also a decadent race. It must be admitted 
that this legend was encouraged by certain political 
parties in France and by their organs in the Press. 
The French reactionary papers, in their hatred for 
the Republic, had been preaching for years that 
republican institutions had demoralised their 
country and reduced it to decadence. For some 
reason, which I have never been able to fathom, 
foreign correspondents in France quote almost ex- 
clusively the reactionary Press ; it is not, therefore, 
surprising that foreign opinion was misled. The 
result of these errors was general amazement in 
England and other foreign countries at the way in 
which the French people rallied to the defence of 
France and at their heroic conduct in the war. 



THE FRENCH CHAKACTER 15 

These decadents turned out to be the best soldiers 
in the world. More than once the bravery of the 
French soldiers alone saved the Allies from defeat ; 
the defence of Verdun will ever be counted one of 
the most splendid examples of human courage and 
tenacity in the history of the world. 

Nobody that knew France was surprised. More 
than ten years ago, when the 17th Regiment refused 
to fire on the revolting wine-growers in the South of 
France, I protested in an article published in the 
London Nation against the deduction that the 
soldiers of that regiment would refuse to defend 
France against attack. I maintained, on the con- 
trary, that their conduct was a proof of superior 
intelligence which would make them all the better 
soldiers in a cause which they believed to be just. 
They held that they had been called upon for 
military service only for the purpose of national 
defence, and they refused quite rightly to be used as 
a police force against their own relatives and 
friends. As citizen-soldiers they regarded them- 
selves as free men and not as slaves. The war has 
justified my opinion. 

French reactionaries have tried to account for a 
phenomenon which belled their prophecies by the 
theory of beneficent war which changes hearts and 
characters by a miracle. Miracles do not happen 
and a great crisis such as the war does not change 
people : it reveals their true characters. In France, 
as elsewhere, the war has shown people as they 
really are — has laid bare their qualities and defects. 
On the whole, it has not given us in any country a 
very pleasing view of human nature, but it has at 
least proved that the French are not a decadent 
race. 

The discovery that they are not has caused 
English opinion suddenly to veer round from one 



16 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

extreme to the other — from ill-informed criticism to 
equally ill-informed and indiscriminating laudation. 
Frivolous and immoral France has become a sort of 
hermaphrodite deity made up of Joan d'Arc 
and M. Clemenceau. I am not sure that this ex- 
travagant adulation is more complimentary to the 
French than the extravagant depreciation of the 
past, for the latter at least allowed them to be 
human. The present attitude of the British public 
towards France is rather like that of those men who 
regard women as angels too good for this world, 
and consequently treat them as imbeciles. Some 
fate will have it that we in England almost in- 
variably praise the French for qualities that they 
do not possess and blame them for defects which are 
not theirs — or else applaud their defects and 
condemn their qualities. 

Perhaps it is not surprising after all that the 
French are not understood by other peoples, for 
they are not easy to understand. The French 
character is a paradox : it combines elements 
apparently opposed to one another. For instance, 
the French in the majority are conservative in all 
that matters, but at the same time they are 
\J ruthlessly iconoclast and indifferent to historical 

associations. So there is no country in which such 
closeness in money matters and such generosity are 
to be found side by side, sometimes in the same 
individuals. Again, one of the most striking 
qualities of the French is their innate good sense ; it 
is most conspicuous perhaps in the peasants, but 
most Frenchmen have in them something of the 
peasant. The bourgeois ^ is usually the descendant of 

1 I shall use the terms " bourgeois " and " bourgeoisie " through- 
out this book. They have almost becomie English words 
and there are no synonyms for them. The term " middle class " 
is not a S3monym for the bourgeoisie, which includes the upper 
class. (See page 26.) 



/ 



THE FRENCH CHARACTER 17 

peasants and so is the workman of the towns ; both 
retain traces of the soil. This good sense is con- 
spicuous in all the ordinary affairs of daily life. 
It is rationalist, even materialist — as positivist as 
the philosophy of Auguste Comte, that essentially 
French intellect. But in politics the good sense of 
the Frenchman often seems to desert him and he 
becomes the sport of words and phrases. This is 
more true of the bourgeoisie than of the other 
classes and least true of the peasantry; even in 
politics the peasant retains his shrewd scepticism 
and sense of realities. The bourgeois has suffered 
from a too purely literary education which has 
made him attach more importance to words than 
to things. The total ignorance of economic ques- 
tions, for example, that one finds even among 
Frenchmen of high intelligence and great knowledge 
is astonishing. Nowhere is that ignorance more 
general than among politicians ; not one of the most 
prominent men in French politics outside the 
Socialist party, except M. Caillaux, has any real 
knowledge of economics or seems to pay much atten- 
tion to them. M. Clemenceau is a case in point. 
His greatest admirer would not venture to say that 
he ever grasped even the elementary data of an 
economic problem or ever thought it worth while to 
try to do so ; his attitude towards such problems is 
purely romantic and literary. Oratory, too, has a 
fatal influence in French politics ; French orators 
are many, and among them are some consummate 
artists — M. Briand, for instance. The taste for rhe- 
toric is as dangerous as a craving for drugs and has 
much the same effect on the mind as have drugs on 
the body. Hence the tendency to desert realities 
for metaphysical abstractions which leads a 
Chamber of Deputies to greet with frantic applause 
the declaration of a Minister that France is " the 



18 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

most beautiful moral person " that the world has 
ever seen. Hence, too, the obsession of victory as 
a sort of metaphysical conception, an end in itself, 
which led to a disastrous refusal to count the cost of 
victory or to consider its practical results. And 
now that the victory has been won, French good 
sense reasserts itself, too late, in the declaration of 
M. Clemenceau that it is only a Pyrrhic victory for 
France. 

Probably in no country is the level of individual 
intelligence so high as in France ; certainly in none 
is the interest in intellectual matters so widespread. 
The contrast with England in this regard is very 
marked. In England knowledge and intellect are 
regarded with suspicion by the majority of people 
and any manifestation of them is bad form in polite 
society. If a " gentleman " happens to be learned 
or intellectual, it is his business to hide the fact and 
pretend to be interested in golf scores or cricketing 
records. The arid waste of the London suburbs is 
weekly refreshed by numerous periodical publica- 
tions chiefly devoted to the movements of titled 
people and to photographs of duchesses and their 
babies. Such papers would have no readers in 
France, where nobody knows the name of a duke 
unless he should happen to be remarkable for some- 
thing else than his title, but where the names of 
great artists, great writers, great savants, and 
great men of science are household words. The 
only aristocracy that counts in France is the intel- 
lectual aristocracy. When in England has any 
great man of letters been the object of popular 
adoration like tHat given to Victor Hugo and 
Beranger, who could hardly walk the streets of 
Paris without being mobbed ? Wliere except in 
Paris would a taxi-driver refuse to take his fare 
from a great writer, saying that it was enough to 



THE FRENCH CHARACTER 19 

have the honour of driving Anatole France ? If 
there were an Anatole France in London no taxi- 
driver would know him by sight. The Parisian 
piidinette makes pilgrimages to the grave of the 
original " Dame aux Camelias " in Montmartre 
cemetery and lays violets on the tomb of Abelard 
and Heloise in Pere-Lachaise. Nothing more 
endears to one the French people than their 
passionate cult of genius and their immense respect 
for intellectual superiority. But, like all human 
qualities, this respect for intellect has its draw- 
backs; literature and men of letters have had too 
great an influence in France. Their influence is 
one of the causes of the excessive importance 
attached to words and to ideas in themselves. It 
has led to a notion that, when one has had a fine 
idea and has expressed it in fine language, one has 
done all that is necessary. It may be true that the 
success of the Germans was in great measure due to 
their faculty for giving practical expression to the 
ideas of others, and that may be, as the French are 
inclined to think, a proof of inferiority. But that 
faculty is likely to prove more profitable in this 
world of hard facts than a capacity for producing 
ideas without the power of giving them practical 
application. The mission of the French has been to 
provide the world with ideas. It is a noble mission 
which makes the existence of the French more 
important to the world than that of any other 
nation; but the practical application of the ideas 
has sometimes been the work of other peoples. 

Perhaps the excessive influence of the written or 
spoken word accounts, at least in part, for one of 
the greatest French paradoxes — the striking contrast 
between individual and collective intelligence. 
All collectivities are less intelligent than most of the 
individuals that compose them ; for some reason 

c 2 



20 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

which has never yet been satisfactorily explained, 
the intellectual and moral level of the crowd is never 
higher, and often lower, than that of the least 
intelligent and least moral individuals of which it is 
composed. The war has proved that. All men 
except the very lowest are better than their Church 
or nation. The greatest crimes in history have 
been committed, not by individuals, but by 
Churches and States, and even Christians attribute 
to their God barbarities of which none of them 
would be individually capable; for gods have the 
mentality of the crowd. All human progress is due 
to the revolt of the individual against the collec- 
tivity; in other words, to the revolt of reason 
against faith. Faith is essentially an attribute of 
the crowd and the faith of each individual really 
depends on that of the others. Hence the extra- 
ordinary manifestations of collective credulity 
which appear at all periods of great tension, such 
as the year 1000 and the recent war. The myth of 
the Russians in England was a striking example 
which showed that the mentality of the crowd is 
much the same in the twentieth century as it was 
in the tenth. Nowhere is this contrast between 
individual and collective intelligence so marked as 
in France. Whereas the French are individually 
more intelligent than any other people and are 
conspicuous for their good sense, they are collec- 
tively inferior in both qualities to some other 
peoples whose individual level is lower than theirs. 
This explains certain phenomena in French politics 
which invariably puzzle the foreigner with a know- 
ledge of France, who cannot understand how people 
so intelligent and sensible individually can be so 
easily led astray by political will-o'-the-wisps and 
induced to forget realities in the pursuit of 
abstractions. 



THE FRENCH CHARACTER 21 

The French respect for mtellect is perhaps a 
manifestation of their essentially democratic spirit. 
More than any other people they judge a man by 
his capacities rather than by the accidents of birth 
or fortune. They are remarkably free from the 
snobbery which is so prominent a characteristic of 
the English and the Americans; there is snohisme 
in France, but that is not the same thing. What 
there is not, is the ludicrous respect for titles and 
descent. Here, however, one must distinguish. 
One of the greatest obstacles to the real under- 
standing of France is the great difference between 
the various classes on the one hand and the various 
parts of the country on the other. The ancient 
provinces, abolished legally, survive in fact and 
are inhabited by different races. The old natural 
patriotism — the attachment of a man to the village 
or the town or the province where he was born — 
has not been eradicated by the mystical patriotism 
invented by the Revolution.^ Again, in no country 
is the difference between the classes so great as in 
France; the gulf between the bourgeoisie and the 
proletariat is so wide that they are almost like two 
nations. For these reasons it is very difficult to 
generalise about the French character. A commor. 
civilisation, common political institutions, and a 
common educational system have produced certain 
characteristics which may be called national, since 
they are prevalent all over France, but even they 
are not universal. No true judgment can be 
formed about France without taking into ac- 
count the regional and class differences. One 
has to ask not merely whether a man is a French- 
man, but also from what part of France he 
comes and whether he is a bourgeois, a peasant, 
or a workman. To give an example, the question 

* See page 174. 



22 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

whether the French are a sober or a drunken people 
cannot be answered by a simple affirmative or 
negative. In the wine-growing districts they are 
sober on the whole, and what drunkenness there 
has been was chiefly due to absinthe, the manufac- 
ture of which is now suppressed. In Normandy, 
Brittany, and French Flanders, which have the 
misfortune to have no wine, drunkenness is very 
prevalent. For wine maketh glad the heart of 
man, but spirits make him drunk and too much 
beer makes him stupid. 

One of the mistakes most often made by 
foreigners is that of identifying France with Paris, 
In fact, Paris is strangely unlike the rest of France 
and the Parisian is a type apart, very different 
from other Frenchmen. He that knows only Paris 
does not know France. Parisians are recruited 
from every part of France ; every one of the races 
that make up the French people is represented 
among them and there is a constant immigration 
into Paris from the provinces. If the popu- 
lation of Paris (the city within the fortifications) 
rose from 1,851,792 in 1872 to 2,888,110 in 1911, 
the increase was certainly not due to excess of 
births over deaths, which is smaller in Paris than 
in France generally — indeed, there is sometimes in 
Paris an excess of deaths over births. It was due 
to immigration from France itself, for the foreign 
population of the department of the Seine was 
actually slightly smaller in 1911 than it had been 
in 1886. In the second generation at least the 
provincials that settle in Paris become Parisians — 
indeed, the immigrants themselves often undergo 
the change and become indistinguishable from 
" Parisiens de Paris." The faculty of assimilation 
which is a characteristic of France as a whole is 
peculiarly strong in Paris, Of course, no country 
is really represented by its capital. Since the 



THE FRENCH CHARACTER 23 

capital is the seat of government and the centre of 
pleasure-seeking, the proportion of wealthy people 
is always much larger in the capital than elsewhere, 
especially of wealthy people with no occupation. 
Nowhere in England is there so large an idle class 
as in London. In every capital there is an ex- 
ceptionally large number of parasites and hangers- 
on of the ruling classes and the rich and a large 
miscellaneous and more or less worthless popula- 
tion. The capital is often the spoiled child of the 
Government; at any rate it comes in for most of 
the official fetes and functions. Perhaps this is 
the reason why the capital of a country is usually 
more patriotic than the rest ; it may be that London 
tends to be Imperialist and Paris to be Chauvinist 
because the Londoners and the Parisians see most 
of the outward pomp and show of imperialism and 
militarism. 

Nowhere is the contrast between the country 
and its capital so marked as in France, yet 
nowhere has the capital so much power and 
influence. Paris is the heart of France in a sense 
in which no other capital is the heart of the 
country. It is also, or claims to be, to a great 
extent the brain of France. The whole intellectual 
and artistic life of France has been concentrated in 
Paris, just as the whole of French government and 
administration has been centralised there. During 
the nineteenth century Paris completely dominated 
France politically and intellectually. It was Paris 
that dethroned Charles X on July 29, 1830, Louis- 
Philippe on February 24, 1848, and Napoleon III 
on September 4, 1870. It was Paris that set up the 
Second and Third Republics. To this day Paris 
governs France through the centralised administra- 
tion.^ The dictatorship of Paris has on the whole 
done more harm than good. It is said that, when 
1 See pages 77-86 



24 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

Blucher's officers expressed a desire to destroy 
Paris, he replied to them : " Laissez-la; la France 
en crevera." Blucher may have exaggerated, but 
without doubt the influence of Paris has often been 
mischievous. For the Parisians have many of the 
defects which have often been erroneously attributed 
to the French people as a whole — or rather a large 
part of the Parisian population has. There is in 
Paris a large population that is impulsive, frivolous 
and emotional. Paris always has been more 
Chauvinist and bellicose than any other part of 
France. Paris is chiefly responsible for most of the 
wars in which France has been involved since 1815. 
The Parisian boulevardiers, the audiences at 
Parisian music-halls, are usually militarist in 
sympathy — " cocardier," as the French say. Until 
the last decade of the nineteenth century even the 
Parisian proletariat was always clamouring for a 
spirited foreign policy; it has changed to a great 
extent, thanks to the influence of Socialism, but 
the Parisian bourgeoisie is still more Chauvinist 
than any other. And in Paris, as in every capital, 
the proportion of bourgeois, and in particular of the 
idle rich class, to the population is, of course, 
larger than anywhere else in France. The influence 
of the Parisian Press — of the " great papers," that 
is to say — is very bad. It is to a large extent 
corrupt and its news is often tendencious or even 
false. Newspapers have far more influence by 
means of their news than by their leading articles. 
The reader, who knows the politics of the paper, is 
on his defence against a leading article ; he has no 
defence against news, lor he has no means of 
knowing whether the facts have been distorted or 
suppressed or even invented. Some of the leading 
Parisian papers do not hesitate deliberately to 
concoct news ; I know a man who left a Parisian 



THE FRENCH CHARACTER 25 

news agency after two or three days because he 
was asked to invent telegrams from abroad in order 
to support a particular policy. It is, of course, 
the Parisian papers which are quoted abroad, but 
they are far from representing French opinion as a 
whole. That is one reason why France is so often 
wrongly judged in other countries. The great 
Parisian papers represent Parisian bourgeois 
opinion and high finance. Since 1899 the political 
influence of Paris has been on the wane. When 
M. Loubet was elected President of the Republic in 
that year, Paris was violently anti-Dreyfusard and 
reactionary. The first municipal elections after his 
accession to office resulted in a sweeping reactionary 
victory in Paris and in the defeat of the re- 
actionaries in every other large town ; that was the 
first symptom of the revolt of the provinces against 
the dictatorship of Paris, which has since developed. 
It has been particularly marked in the South of 
France, which refuses to take its orders from Paris. 
Indeed, during the Waldeck-Rousseau and Combes 
Ministries (1899-1905) the provinces began to 
impose their political wOl on Paris and the power 
of the centralised administration became con- 
siderably diminished. The deputies received 
instructions from their constituents which they 
were obliged to follow, and they in their turn 
exercised a control over the Executive such as had 
never before been known in France. Since 1905 
the Executive has regained its power, but the pro- 
vinces still refuse to take their politics from Paris. 
This change is due to the increase of the industrial 
population, to Ihe growth of the large towns, to 
the improved communications which have enabled 
the provinces to be better informed, to the develop- 
ment of the provincial Press, especially the great 
provincial dailies, and to a growing opinion in 



26 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

favour of decentralisation. Intellectual and artistic 
decentralisation has also begun and H seems likely 
that tlie control of France by Paris will, before 
long, be a thing of the past. It will be a change 
for the better. Much that has been mistaken in 
French policy has been due to the impulsiveness 
and waywardness of the capital and will be cor- 
rected by the solid good sense of the provinces. 
The South will continue to have great influence 
on France. Languedoc in particular has always 
produced men combining idealism with practical 
capacity and good sense — perhaps more great men 
have come from Languedoc than from any other 
province. 

The democratic spirit is a matter about which 
one must not generalise too much; for it is a 
characteristic rather of the peasantry and the 
proletariat than of the bourgeoisie. Here it may 
be said that the term bourgeoisie is used throughout 
this book in its strict sense, namely, as a descrip- 
tion of all that are not either peasants or wage- 
earners. The bourgeois is a man who owns propertv 
as distinct from a man who lives entirely on his 
fearnings. The peasant may, of course, and usually 
Hoes in France, own property, but the peasantry is 
a class by itself with its own characteristics. Under 
the old regime the bourgeoisie was also dis- 
tinguished from the noblesse, but the latter class 
has ceased to count in France, except so far as it 
has become merged in the grande bourgeoisie — the 
wealthy financial, commercial and industrial class. 
Half the people that profess nowadays to belong to 
the noblesse are merely bourgeois who were given 
titles under the Empires or the Restoration, have 
bought them from the Pope or from some minor 
foreign Sovereign, or have simply conferred them 
upon themselves. Moreover, people belonging to a 



THE FRENCH CHARACTER 27 

family of which some member was ennobled before 
the Revolution do not hesitate, when the direct line 
is extinct, to revive the title in their own favour, 
although they may be only remote collateral 
descendants of the original holder. Now that no 
titles are recognised by law, anybody can assume 
one; it is said that most of the titles used by 
gentlemen in the French Diplomatic Service were 
acquired in this simple fashion. The remnant of 
the old noblesse still has certain characteristics 
which differ from those of the bourgeoisie, some- 
times for the better, but it has so completely 
isolated itself from the life of France by its persis- 
tent obscurantism and reaction that it need not be 
taken into account, and it is really merged in the 
bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie as a whole is, then, 
much less democratic than the two other classes. 
The tendency on the part of the nouveaux riches to 
call themselves counts or marquises is evidence of 
that fact, but here again one must distinguish. 
There are really three classes of bourgeoisie, the 
upper, the middle, and the lower. The upper 
bourgeoisie consists of the great financiers, the 
remnant of the noblesse, and the wealthy capitalists 
generally; the middle bourgeoisie is composed of 
professional men, artists, men of letters, the higher 
Government officials, professors, and well-to-do 
rentiers and business men; in the lower class — the 
petite bourgeoisie — are the small rentiers and 
tradesmen, minor Government officials, elemen- 
tary teachers and business employees. The very 
small tradesmen and shop assistants belong 
rather to the proletariat. A large section of 
bourgeois society is what would be called in 
England or America Bohemian, by a misuse of 
that term ; that is to say, it is essentially 
anti-bourgeois in spirit and has freed itself from the 



28 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

restrictions of bourgeois morality and convention. 
In this section the democratic spirit is very strong. 
But the grand bourgeois, the petit rentier — the man 
who has scraped together enough to Hve frugally on 
rent or interest — and a large section of the middle 
bourgeoisie are intensely anti-democratic. It is a 
curious fact, which a French writer has remarked, 
that there is still in France a prejudice against 
trade and commerce — a prejudice which in its 
origin is not altogether unreasonable. The ambi- 
tion of every French tradesman is to save enough 
money to become a rentier and live without 
working.^ 

The democratic spirit of the peasantry and the 
proletariat makes relations with them easy and 
pleasant for a bourgeois. There is not in France the 
constraint between persons of different classes which 
makes their relations often difficult in England. 
French domestic servants, for instance, are on more 
friendly terms with their employers than is the case 
in England; they are polite without being servile 
and familiar without taking liberties. A Parisian 
workman can be quite at his ease in a bourgeois 
drawing-room simply because he does not regard a 
bourgeois as his better, but treats him with the 
courtesy due to an equal. French manners have a 
levelling tendency. The mere fact that one ad- 
dresses everybody as Monsieur, Madame, or 
Mademoiselle, as the case may be, tends to a sense 
of equality, just as the fact that in England people 
say Sir or Ma'am only fo their supposed 
superiors has the opposite effect. Manners and 
social usages have more importance than many 
people imagine ; there is at present a deplorable 
tendency in England to neglect them altogether 
and to <;ultivate rudeness. The French may be too 

1 See page 188« 



THE FRENCH CHARACTER 29 

ceremonious, from our point of view, but it is 
better to exaggerate in that direction than in the 
other. It is not at all an indifferent matter that in 
France, when one goes into a small shop, one raises 
one's hat to the lady behind the counter and says 
"Good morning" to her; the custom has an 
immense social significance. Education, too, is 
both better and cheaper in France than in 
England. The best schools in France cost only 
about £16 a year, with the result that people can 
send their sons and daughters to a Lycee who in 
England could not possibly afford a similar educa- 
tion. The public schools in France are really 
public and are not, like the English institutions 
miscalled by that name, nurseries of snobbery. 
The French Universities are equally inexpensive 
and democratic, and are available for any boys and 
girls whose parents can afford to keep them without 
earning their living up to the age of twenty or 
thereabouts. The consequence is that it is much 
more easy in France than in England for the son 
of a workman or a peasant to rise to eminence in a 
learned profession or in politics. Many of the 
leading French politicians have risen from the 
ranks ; for instance, M. Painleve is the son of a 
Parisian artisan and M. Briand of a country 
publican. M. Painleve has not only been Prime 
Minister of France, but is also one of the most 
eminent mathematicians in Europe, is a member 
of the Institute, and has been a professor at the 
Sorbonne and the Ecole Poly technique. 

Nevertheless, the feeling on the part of the 
proletariat that they are not in any way inferior to 
the bourgeois does not tend to bring the two 
classes together. It has the opposite effect. For 
the workman knows that economically he is not the 
equal of the bourgeois, and his passion for equality 



30 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

makes him the more determined to break down the 
economic barrier that separates the two classes. 
It is no longer the ambition of the French pro- 
letariat to become bourgeois ; they have an intense 
class consciousness, and their feeling against the 
bourgeoisie is often very bitter. The bitterness is 
intensified by resentment at the way in which too 
many, though not all, of those that have come out 
of the proletariat and improved their social position 
have become completely bourgeois in feeling, even 
sometimes the worst enemies of the class from 
which they sprang. 

In the country districts the sense of equality has 
as marked an influence as in the towns. The 
contrast between a French country village, except 
in certain backward districts, and an English one 
is very striking. In England a whole village is 
often the property of one man, who necessarily 
becomes the lord and master of its inhabitants; 
nobody can even live in it without his permission, 
and independent thought or action becomes an 
impossibility. In France the peasants own their 
land and are independent of everybody. The 
system of peasant proprietorship has grave draw- 
backs, as we shall see later, and I doubt whether 
it can last,^ but it has the advantage over the 
English system of producing an independent pea- 
santry. The chateau and the cure are as closely allied 
in France as are the squire and the parson in Eng- 
land, but whereas the latter are a formidable power 
and sometimes an oppressive tyranny, the chateau 
and the cure in France are now almost without 
influence, except in the reactionary regions of the 
West. In Brittany, the Vendee, and in certain parts 
of Normandy the chateau and the cure are still a 
power, because the Church holds the people. But 

1 See page 220. 



THE FRENCH CHARACTER 31 

the power of the chateau cannot exist anywhere 
unless the Church is able to bolster it up. And in 
the greater part of rural France the Church has lost 
its hold : the peasants on the whole are the most 
anti-clerical part of the population, no doubt 
because they have suffered most in the past from 
the rule of the clergy. 

One of the paradoxes of the French character is 
the combination with a democratic spirit of respect 
for authority, which is manifested, for example, in 
the reverence of many Frenchmen for Government 
officials and for persons holding any public posi- 
tion. A prefect, a senator, or a deputy in France is 
a sort of minor deity, who is feared and respected 
even if he be not liked. This reverence for authority 
is, I think, a legacy of Catholicism — one of the 
many impressions which centuries of Catholic 
tradition have made on the French character and 
which still survive in a France where Catholicism 
has been abandoned by the great majority of the 
people. French anti-clerical papers will talk, for 
instance, of the necessity of preserving the 
" hierarchy " of the Administration. The respect 
for authority has greatly diminished during the 
last quarter of a century, especially among the 
proletariat ; its decline dates from the secularisation 
of the national schools in 1882, which has had a 
great effect in many ways on the French character. 
But it is still too prevalent, and by a natural 
reaction respect for authority leads to frondisme : 
the French are very prone to try to evade any law 
that they can evade with impunity, just as the 
schoolboy will evade the rules if he is sure that he 
will not be found out. There is nothing that most 
Frenchmen like so much as to break a law; they 
feel that they are getting one back on their masters. 
Respect for authority also leads to a lack of civism 



32 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

— too often Frenchmen do not sufficiently regard 
the general welfare of the community. A French 
friend of mine, who is a Catholic and a reactionary, 
was filled with admiration after a visit to London 
for the regulation of the traffic by the police, and 
cited it to me as an example of English respect for 
authority and its beneficial results. I told him, of 
course, that it was nothing of the kind — that the 
reason why drivers in London stopped when the 
policeman told them to was not that they had any 
particular respect for the policeman as a representa- 
tive of authority, but that they recognised, even if 
unconsciously, that the regulation of the traffic is 
ultimately to the advantage of everybody. This is 
civism, not respect for authority, and it is much 
less common in France. A few years ago measures 
were taken to regulate the traffic in Paris, and they 
have had some success. The policeman wields a 
white baton, no doubt as a symbol of authority, 
and he is obeyed as a rule, because disobedience 
involves a penalty; but if a driver can manage to 
slip through without being noticed by the police- 
man, he will do so. This is typical of a too 
common French attitude towards regulations, even 
if they are obviously to the general advantage. 
That attitude is not a symptom of love of indivi- 
dual liberty, but of lawlessness arising from a 
natural dislike of the authority to which submission 
is too readily given when it cannot be evaded. It 
has a parallel in the anti-clericalism of mediaeval 
tales, the writers of which took their revenge 
against their hated despots in the only way open 
to them. Individual liberty can be obtained only 
by voluntary discipline and readiness to accept 
regulations of general utility made by all in the 
interest of all. The true liberal will revolt against 
any exercise of authority, but will spontaneously 



THE FRENCH CHARACTER 33 

make whatever slight restrictions on his own liberty 
are necessary to secure the liberty of others, know- 
ing that in the end he himself will benefit by what 
is to the interest of all. 

The French have been too ready to put up with 
the exercise of authority and to submit to abuses 
and even oppression. This is partly the result of 
their remarkable patience and endurance, which 
have been so conspicuous during the war; they 
have perhaps more capacity for endurance than any 
other people. One realises how patient the French 
are when one sees them waiting for hours without 
complaint to see a Minister or a deputy or even a 
doctor; the impatient Englishman, if he consented 
to wait at all, would be fuming the whole time. 
This patience is a quality which has stood the 
French in good stead, but it can be, and sometimes 
is, carried to excess. Some years ago I arrived at 
the Gare St. Lazare at Paris two or three days 
before the August Bank Holiday about half an hour 
before the time of my train. I had sent my luggage 
an hour in advance, but when I got to the 
station it was still in the courtyard. There was a 
long queue of people waiting to have their luggage 
weighed and registered and I saw that I had no 
chance of catching the train at the rate at which 
things were moving. I went into the luggage-hall 
and saw that of four weighing machines only one 
was being used, which accounted for the delay. I 
protested so vigorously that the station-master was 
sent for and immediately ordered all the four 
machines to be put into use. The other passengers 
were so grateful to me that they insisted on my 
luggage being weighed first, quite out of my turn. 
The strange thing was that, although some of them 
had been there for a couple of hours, not one had 
thought of doing what I did ; but for my English 



34 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

impatience, three-fourths of them would have 
missed their trains, and then there would probably 
have been a small riot. Now this incident is typical 
of the French attitude towards authority ; the French 
will too often endure abuses for years without 
making any effective protest, and when at last the 
situation becomes absolutely unbearable they will 
break out and smash up everything. That is the 
reason why there have been so many revolutions 
in France ; nobody thinks of making reforms until 
it is too late and a clean sweep has become inevit- 
able. 

It seems to me that civism is the only reasonable 
form of patriotism; it is based on good sense — on 
recognition of the fact that the advantage of all is 
the advantage of each— and is a form of enlightened 
self-interest. And, as I have said, it is essential to 
liberty. Nobody should be more willing to admit 
the importance of civism than the Anarchist or 
" libertaire," for it can be possible to get rid of all 
compulsion only if and when everybody recognises 
the necessity of a certain amount of voluntary self- 
sacrifice for the common good. The lack of civism 
in France is at once the result of authority and a 
difficulty in the way of getting rid of it. There is 
no paradox more striking than the unwillingness 
of too many Frenchmen to make small sacrifices, 
pecuniary or other, in the general interest and their 
willingness to sacrifice their lives for an abstraction 
called " la patrie." This time, it is true, war was 
declared on France, but that was not the case in 
1870 or on many other previous occasions, and even 
this time, after the invasion had been checked, too 
many people in France talked as though somehow 
or other " la patrie " would continue to exist even 
if there were no Frenchmen left. So did a witty 
prelate explain his belief in the indefectibility of 



THE FRENCH CHARACTER 35 

the Church by pointing out that the Church would 
still exist even if it were reduced to the Pope and 
one old woman. 

Respect for authority is naturally incompatible 
with a right appreciation of the value of liberty. 
Napoleon was probably right in saying that the 
French attached more importance to equality than 
to liberty, but that is less true now, especially so far 
as the proletariat is concerned. " Libertaire " or 
liberal ideas have made immense progress in the 
proletariat in recent years and are now dominant 
among trade unionists. There is actually less poli- 
tical liberty in France than in England, but there 
is perhaps more social liberty, except in the case 
of unmarried girls of the bourgeoisie — or at least I 
should have said so five years ago, but the war has 
made such radical changes in England that I doubt 
whether it is still true. The French have, however, 
a strong dislike of prying into other people's affairs 
or of allowing other people to pry into theirs. An 
example of this is the privacy of divorce cases : a 
divorce suit is tried in camera, and it is illegal to 
publish anything about it except the fact of the 
divorce, if and when it is granted. The law 
properly recognises that a difference between hus- 
band and wife is a private matter which does not 
concern the public. This attitude tends to social 
freedom, as does the disposition of a great many 
French people to regard morality as largely a 
matter of taste. The remark of Felicie Nanteuil in 
Anatole France's " Histoire Comique " — "Je com- 
prends tout, mais il y a des choses qui me de- 
goutent " — is typical of a common French attitude 
and is perhaps after all the last word on the matter. 

One of the greatest qualities of the French is their 
intellectual sincerity ; no people is more willing to 
recognise facts. Perhaps this is one of the greatest 

D 2 



36 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

differences between the French and the J^ngUsh, 
for one of our national faihngs is unwilUngness to 
recognise facts. The French, too, realise more 
generally than we do that it is not enough to say 
what one thinks : one must also, to be sincere, have 
adequate reasons for thinking it. The difference 
between the French and the English character in 
this regard makes the candour of many French 
authors shocking to many English readers. The 
Frenchman, being essentially a rationalist, will not 
take for granted even the most generally accepted 
beliefs; he asks what is the reason for them. 
Voltaire is the typical example of the French in- 
tellect at its best ; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was 
not of course a Frenchman, has had great influence 
in France, but it is always the influence of Voltaire 
that returns after every reaction. That is the true 
French tradition, the natural tendency of French 
intellectual development. The development has 
been momentarily checked from time to time by 
such movements as Romanticism and Bergsonism, 
but they have not been and never will be lasting. 
Whatever may be their temporary aberrations, the 
French in the majority remain at bottom sceptical, 
rationalist and intellectualist. They are the least 
sentimental of peoples, which is not to say that 
they always or even usually lack sentiment, but 
their sense of realities keeps them from sentimen- 
talism. That is true in varying degrees of all the 
so-called Latin peoples; the Germans, the Ameri- 
cans, and the English are the sentimental peoples 
of the world. The French, too, are less emotional 
than is sometimes supposed — certainly less so than 
the Americans, the most emotional people in the 
world. They are often excitable, but that is not 
the same thing. The Frenchman of the North and 
the Norman are calm, shrewd and prudent, and 



THE FRENCH CHARACTER 37 

those qualities are to be found all over France. Paris, 
as has been said, is more emotional and impulsive 
than any other part of France; hence the mistake 
in this regard often made by foreigners, who are 
inclined to judge France by Paris. 

To sum up, the French are above all an intellec- 
tual race; there is more clear thinking in France 
than in any other country and the marvellous 
lucidity of French prose, the finest in the world, is 
the result of clear thinking. They also possess in a 
marked degree that most necessary of qualities — 
imagination. The greatest masters of prose fiction 
are to be found in France and in Russia, and, from 
Moliere onwards, French comedy has had no rival. 
But in poetry — at any rate modern poetry — the 
French are inferior to the English, although France 
produced in the nineteenth century at least three 
great poets — Victor Hugo, Baudelaire and Verlaine. 
The modern French language is less poetical than 
was the French of the sixteenth century, for the 
language was unhappily impoverished in the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries by the French 
Academy, which purged it of words supposed to be 
insufficiently classical. It is this that makes 
modern French the most difficult language in the 
world to write well, even for Frenchmen them- 
selves ; the English language, being much richer in 
words, is more easy to manage. Nevertheless, 
there is more good writing in France than in 
England. 

The notion that the French as a nation are un- 
trustworthy, which has been and perhaps still is 
prevalent in England, is false. Their habit of 
paying compliments makes us think them insincere, 
but it is a mere convention of formal politeness, 
which means no more than " Dear Sir " at the 
beginning of a letter, and the French themselves 



38 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

attach no importance to it. Frenchmen can be as 
loyal as anybody, and perhaps women on the whole 
are more straightforward in France than in Eng- 
land, where, by all accounts, the minx — not to say 
the " demi-vierge " — is at present too common. One 
failing too prevalent in France, especially in the 
bourgeoisie, is want of moral courage ; on the other 
hand, there is no country where physical bravery 
is so general. Another failing is vanity, collective 
rather than individual; it is "la gloriole" that 
has too often made the French run after the mirage 
of glory. Chauvinism is a manifestation of 
national vanity, just as British Imperialism is a 
manifestation of our overweening national pride. 
We have never made conquests for the sake of 
glory, which has no attractions for us, but we firmly 
believe that we are destined by God to rule the 
world. It is, no doubt, for that reason that we were 
so indignant when our German cousins, who resem- 
ble us in many ways, began to hold the same belief 
about themselves. " Rule Britannia ! " asserts 
more arrogant claims than " Deutschland iiber 
Alles," and there is no French national song resem- 
bling either of them. The note of the Marseillaise 
is not the domination of other countries by France, 
nor even primarily patriotic devotion, but " glory" 
to be won by a war for liberty against tyrants — 
" Liberte, Liberte cherie,^ combats avec tes defen- 
seurs ! " It is for France as the country of the 
Revolution that the appeal is made to " Amour 
sacre de la patrie." So, too, in the chorus of the 
" Chant du Depart " France is identified with the 
Republic : 

" La R6publique noiis appelle, 
Sachons vaincre ou sachons psrir : 
Un Fran^ais doit vivre pour elle. 
Pour elle un Fran^ais doit mourir." 



THE FRENCH CHARACTER 39 

Ever since the Revolution French Chauvinism 
has been tinged with the revolutionary ideal of a 
crusade against despotism based on the identifica- 
tion of the cause of France with the cause of liberty. 
Even the late M. Paul Deroulede, that apostle of 
" La Revanche," was influenced by this spirit in 
his most bellicose incitements, and his notion of 
victory and its consequences was very different from 
that of some contemporary French Chauvinists. 
For example, take these lines in one of his mili- 
tary songs : 

" Car nous nous montrerons des vainqueurs au cceur juste 
Et nous ne reprendrons que ce qui no\is fut pris." 

After the victory of " La Revanche " he anticipates 
" la paix calme, sereine, auguste," and the end of 
war : 

" Et nous ne voudrons plus qu'on parle de bataille, 
Et nous d^sapprendrons la guerre a nos enfants." 

Such illusions have not been limited to France 
during the last five years; we have heard a great 
deal in England of "the war to end war" — the 
distinguished author of that phrase must be sorry 
that he coined it. But the clever exploitation of 
the revolutionary side of Chauvinism in France 
during the war was an important factor in its pro- 
longation ; the national vanity was flattered by the 
belief that France was once more fighting for liberty 
against tyranny. The French people is now learn- 
ing that the persons who induced it to make such 
terrible sacrifices in that belief had other aims. 



CHAPTER II 

PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 

France has always been primarily an agricultural 
country. Until recently the majority of the popu- 
lation — at one time the great majority — was 
engaged in agriculture, and even now, in spite of 
the steady exodus from the country into the towns 
which has been going on for more than twenty 
years, the rural population is about 48 per cent, of 
the whole. The natural resources of Frsnce are 
immense and have not even yet been fully turned 
to account. Not only is it one of the most fertile 
countries in the world, but the great variety of 
climates to be found within its borders enables 
every kind of agricultural product to be grown. 
One of the most valuable of those products is wine. 
French wine is the best in the world and is likely 
to remain so, thanks to the natural qualities of the 
soil and the skill of the wine-growers. Every real 
connoisseur of wine in every country prefers a fine 
burgundy or a fine bordeaux to any other drink yet 
known to man. The discoveries of Pasteur not 
only saved the French vines from destruction, but 
also enabled the wine-growing area to be extended. 
Wine is now produced in thirty-two of the eighty- 
eight French departments, and the wine-growing 
districts are the most prosperous of the whole 
country. 



PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 41 

Within recent years French industry has been 
greatly developed, although Protection has done 
much to hinder its development. Many French- 
men wish France to become a great industrial 
country in emulation of Great Britain, Germany, 
and the United States; the huge fortunes amassed 
from industry excite their envy. I cannot believe 
that they are right. The general prosperity of a 
country is not increased by the concentration of 
enormous wealth in the hands of a few individuals. 
Individual fortunes are smaller in France than in 
England, and even the total annual income of the 
country is smaller, but the general level of pros- 
perity was higher before the war and there was less 
extreme poverty. On the other hand, the prole- 
tariat is worse off in France than in England ; 
wages are lower than in England even nominally, 
and their real value is much lower, since the cost 
of living in France is, in consequence of Protection, 
higher than in England — probably on an average 
about 40 per cent, higher. London is the cheapest 
capital in Europe, except Brussels, and Paris is 
the dearest. I am speaking, of course, of normal 
times, not of the abnormal conditions created by 
the war. During the war the difference has been 
more in favour of England than in normal times. 
Since the Armistice prices in France have risen 
enormously, and the cost of living there is now more 
than double what it is in England.^ 

^ According to a French official return published in May, 1919, 
the cost of living increased between 1910 and 1919 292 p3r cent, 
in France, 160 per cent, iia Great Britain, and 100 per cent, in 
the United States of America. But the Berne Statistical 
Society, after a long and exhaustive inquiry, estimated in July, 
1919, that the increase during the war of the prices of food, 
clothes, and rent had been 481 per cent, in Italy, 368 j.9r cent. 
in France, 257 per cent, in Switzerland, 240 per cent, in Great 
Britain, and 220 per cent, in the United States. It is, of course, 



42 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

The inferior financial position of the proletariat 
in France is due, at least in part, to the greater 
subdivision of property. The very fact that a 
majority of the inhabitants own some property 
makes the position of the propertyless minority 
worse than ever. No doubt the French workmen 
are not so well organised as the workmen of Eng- 
land or the United States. Their trade unions have 
a smaller membership, even proportionately, and 
are poorer and less powerful. But the weakness of 
the labour organisations is itself partly due to the 
fact that the proletariat is a minority and that the 
distribution of property among so many owners 
makes the forces of conservatism stronger and in- 
creases the difficulties with which the proletariat 
has to contend.^ In England, the town workman 
and the agricultural labourer have the same in- 
terests, for both are wage-earners, and together 
they are the great majority of the country. In 
France the labourers working for hire are only a 
small minority of the agricultural population. 
The bulk of the agricultural population is 
composed of small farmers owning their own 
land, who often regard their interests as being 
opposed to those of the proletariat and are 
sometimes hostile to it. The war, unfortu- 
nately, widened the breach between the rural and 

impossible for me to form any opinion as to the respective 
accuracy of these different figures. Since it is better to err on 
the side of moderation, I have assumed in this book the accuracy 
of the French ofi&cial estimate so far as France is concerned. 

^ In 1906 it was officially estimated that of the twenty million 
people (in roTind numbers) engaged in active work in France, 
8,300,000 were employers (or men or wom,en working on their 
own account) and 11,700,000 were employed in the receipt of 
salaries or wages. But the employed included a considerable 
number of boTirgeois, and there were nearly twenty million 
people not engaged in active work, of whom much less than half 
were children. In Germany in 1907 there were 5,490,000 
employers and 19,127,000 employed. 



PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 43 

urban populations. It was necessary to withdraw 
a considerable proportion of town workmen from 
the front to the munition factories, with the result 
that the peasants have had, on the whole, heavier 
losses in the war than any other class. The differ- 
ence is not really so great as the peasants them- 
selves imagine, for, in fact, many of the employees 
in the munition factories came from rural districts ; 
it was only certain classes of highly skilled work 
that had to be restricted to men previously em- 
ployed in the metal trades. The losses in the war 
of the Parisian proletariat have been higher than 
the average of the whole country, a fact which dis- 
proves the legend that the urban population has 
not greatly suffered. Nevertheless, there is con- 
siderable resentment in the rural districts at the 
heavy losses that they have sustained, and that 
resentment has been deliberately nourished by the 
authorities on the principle of ''divide and 
conquer." It is, however, a remarkable fact that 
for some years before the war Socialism had been 
making progress in the rural districts, which 
became very marked at the general election of 1914. 
The reason of this phenomenon is no doubt that 
the system of small ownership is breaking down in 
France, for reasons which will be examined later. 

One important reason — perhaps the most impor- 
tant — of the greater level of prosperity in France 
than in most other countries is the limitation of 
the family. Over the greater part of the country 
parents in all classes now refuse to bring into the 
world children for whom they have no means of 
providing. The only parts of the Country in which 
large families are still at all common are those in 
which the Church has a strong hold and drunken- 
ness is prevalent — I do not say that there is neces- 
sarily any connection between these two conditions. 



44 



MY SECOND COUNTRY 



Since the Church, although it condemns the limita- 
tion of families as a sin, utterly fails to prevent it 
over the greater part of France, even among those 
that still accept its ministrations, it is probable 
that drunkenness is the chief cause of the large 
families still to be found in the north and west of 
the country. For more than twenty years before 
the war the population of France had remained 
almost stationary, the increase being on an average 
about 60,000 a year.^ Loud lamentations have 

1 Between 1872, when the first census was taken after the 
cession to Germany of Alsace-Lorraine, and 1911, date of the 
last census, the population of France increased by 3,498,588, 
an average increase of 89,707 a year. Between 1872 and 1891 
the increase was 2,240,271, an average of 117,909 a year; and 
between 1891 and 1911 it was 1,258,317, an annual average of 
62,915. The effect of the limitation of the family was most 
marked between 1886 and 1896 ; after the latter year the birth- 
rate rose again slightly, but it fell again in 1906-1911, although 
not to the level of 1886-1896. The following are the figures 
of all the censuses of the Third Republic ; — 









Increase in 








population of 








French 




Population. 


Increase 


nationality. 


1872 


36,102,921 


— 


— 


1876 


36,905,788 


802,867 


— 


1881 


37,672,048 


766,260 


— 


1886 


38,218,903 


546,855 


— 


1891 


38,343,192 


124,289 


137,715 


1896 


38,517,975 


175,027 


249,334 


1901 


38,961,945 


443,970 


433,683 


1906 


39,252,245 


290,322 


318,685 


1911 


39,601,509 


349,264 


225,982 



The census returns of 1886 were the first that gave the number 
of foreigners resident in France. The Law of Jmie 26, 1889, 
obliged certain categories of foreigners bom in France to become 
French citizens ; hence a considerable decrease in the foreign 
population between 1889 and 1896. It increased slightly in 
1896-1901, fell again slightly in 1901-1906, and increased in 
1906-1911 by 123,282. The total foreign population in 1911 
was 1,132,696, of whom 204,679 were in the department of the 
Seine, 180,004 in that of the Nord, and 137,223 in Bouches-du- 
Rh6ne. The foreign popvilation in 1886 was 1,115,214, so that 



PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 45 

been raised by certain people in France over this 
state of things, but they have been as useless as 
they are unjustifiable. Civilised people will never 
again consent to breed like rabbits and there is, 
happily, no hope that the nations of Europe will 
consent to compete with one another in population 
— a competition as stupid and pernicious as com- 
petition in armaments. The only advantage of a 
large population is that it provides more food 
for cannon, and it may be hoped that the 
peoples of Europe have no intention of continuing 
to produce children for that purpose. Over- 
population may suit the purpose of militarists 
and capitalist exploiters ; it is certainly not to the 
interest of the masses of the people of any 
country. 

Perhaps the limitation of families has been 
carried to excess in France ; no doubt the country 
could support a rather larger population. The 
area of France before the war was nearly as large as 
that of the German Empire — the difference was 
only about 1,000 square miles — and the popula- 
tion of France was not before the war very much 
more than half that of Germany. But France 
could support a population equal to that of Ger- 
many only by becoming an industrial country 
and sacrificing most of what makes life worth 
living. If families have been too much restricted 
in France, that is the result of the present 
economic system. In a capitalist state of society 
a man without property or with only a very little 
property who brings into the world a large number 
of children is exposing them to the risk of a life 

it increased by only 17,484 in 25 years, but the immigration has, 
of course, been larger, as the voluntary naturalisations and the 
operation of the law already mentioned have to be taken into 
account. 



46 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

of misery. The limitation of families in France is 
not due as a rule to the selfishness, of parents, but 
to their desire only to have children to whom they 
can give a decent chance in life, and to an intelli- 
gent recognition of the fact that in the case of 
human beings, as in all other cases, quality is more 
important than quantity. The well-meaning 
persons that waste their time in urging people to 
have as many children as they possibly can — many 
of whom are celibate priests and most of whom 
have not practised what they preach — would be 
better occupied in devoting their energies to reduc- 
ing the high rate of infant mortality and giving to 
the children that are born a better chance of sur- 
viving. Above all, they should devote themselves 
to helping the mothers of illegitimate children. 
The ridiculous notion that a woman has no right 
to have a child without having previously obtained 
the permission of a priest or a mayor is happily on 
the way to disappear in France, especially among 
the proletariat, although, unfortunately, it is still 
regarded as more permissible for a girl to have a 
lover than to have a child by him. In Paris, how- 
ever, about 30 per cent, of the children born are 
illegitimate. The position of an illegitimate child 
is far better in France than in England, where it is 
worse than in almost any other country in the 
world. Not only can the parents legitimise the 
child by subsequent marriage, but an illegitimate 
child legally " recognised " by its father has, 
although remaining illegitimate, the right to take 
its father's name, and not only to be supported by 
him, but to inherit a certain portion of his property 
if he has any. What makes a woman hesitate to 
have a child when she is not married is less the 
stigma attaching to illegitimacy — for that is dimin- 
ishing — than the difficulty of earning enough money 



PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 47 

to keep the child. ^ The solution of this problem is 
essential if it be desired to raise the French birth- 
rate. It is estimated that there are about 300,000 
unmarried couples living together in Paris, and 
there are probably quite as many who do not live 
together. The disinclination to contract legal mar- 
riage is on the increase, especially among women, 
and it is futile to imagine that it can be checked. 
The matter must be faced without prejudice, and 
women that do not wish to marry must be en- 
couraged to have children if they desire it. The only 
solution of the problem is the endowment of 
motherhood, whether legitimate or illegitimate. 

^ There is now a bastardy law in France and the " recherche 
de patemite " can be made either by the mother, or, if she fail to 
make it, by the child on attaining the age of twenty-one. If 
the paternity is proved, the father can be compelled to con- 
tribute to the support of the child while a minor and has certain 
rights over it. The law has not been much used up to the 
present by the mothers of illegitimate children, raany of whom 
prefer to retain the sole control of the child, but it has no doubt 
helped in many cases to obtain pecuniary aid from the father 
without legal action. The French law does not compel even 
the mother of an illegitimate child to " recognise " it, and it 
can be registered as the offspring of " parents unknown." The 
mother can also hand the child over to the Assistance PubUque 
(Department of National Poor Relief), which wiU then entirely 
maintain it until it can earn its own living. Children taken 
over by the Assistance Publique are boarded out with families, 
usually in the country, and are sometimes treated by their 
foster-parents as their own children, but sometimes not at all 
well treated. A mother that abandons her child to the Assist- 
ance Pubhque finally loses all rights over it, and is not allowed 
to communicate with it or know where it is ; the Assistance 
Publique will give no help to a mother that retams her child. 
This system is thoroughly bad, as it encourages mothers to 
abandon their children, whereas they should be encouraged to 
keep them. Many mothers that abandon their children to the 
Assistance Publique deeply regret it afterwards, and during the 
war a large number applied to the Assistance Publique to be put 
into communication with sons who had then reached military 
age. The request was granted when the whereabouts of the 
son waa known, as I believe that such a request always is when 
the abandoned child has reached his or her majority. 



48 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

The endowment should be hmited to three children, 
which is the maximum number desirable in any 
country. But the population question as a whole 
will never be put on a satisfactory basis until the 
economic conditions are such that all children born 
will have a chance in life. Then, and only 
then, will people be willing to have a reason- 
able number of children — a number sufficient 
to keep the population at the same level and pre- 
vent it from diminishing. A constant increase of 
population would be no more desirable in socialist 
than in capitalist conditions, for the world can sup- 
port in comfort only a certain number of people, 
and if that number be exceeded the individual 
standard of comfort must be reduced. The notion 
that production can be increased to an unlimited 
extent is a preposterous fallacy. Malthus only 
formulated in a theory the conclusions of ordinary 
good sense. The discoveries of modern science 
have so enormously diminished the natural checks 
to the growth of the population that artificial 
restriction has become necessary. We can never 
again return to what M. Sixte-Quenin has called 
" le lapinisme integral." 

Had the conditions remained normal there would 
lot, then, have been much reason for anxiety in 
regard to the French population. But for five 
years the conditions have not been normal. The 
war has made the population question acute and 
has brought France face to face with a serious situa- 
tion. The birth-rate, which before the war was 
18 per 1,000, has sunk to 10 per 1,000, and the 
death-rate in the non-combatant population has 
slightly increased.^ 

^ It appears from the Parisian mtinicipal statistics published 
in July 1919, that the number of births in the department of 
the Seine fell from 73,599 in 1911 to 47,480 in 1918. On the 



PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 49 

The quinquennial census should have been taken 
in 1916, but it was postponed on account of the 
war and has not yet taken place. Until 1919 no 
official statistics of births and deaths had been pub- 
lished since the beginning of the war, but in Feb- 
ruary, 1919, M. March, the Director of Statistics, 
issued a report giving the figures for 77 French 
departments for the four years 1914-1917. The 
departments concerned are those that were never 
invaded; the statistics for the 11 invaded depart- 
ments are not yet available. The statistics are as 
follows, the figures of 1913 being given for the pur- 
pose of comparison : — 







Birth-rate 




Death-rate 




Births. 


per 1.000. 


Deaths. 


per 1,000. 


1913 . 


.. 604,801 


183 


587,445 


178 


1914 . 


.. 594,222 


180 


647,549 


196 


1915 . 


.. 387,806 


117 


655,146 


198 


1916 . 


.. 315,087 


95 


607,742 


18-4 


1917 . 


.. 343,310 


104 


613,148 


186 



The deaths in these tables are those of the non- 
combatant population only and do not include 
even deaths of mobilised men in barracks or hospi- 
tals. It will be seen that, whereas in 1913 there 
was the small excess of 17,366 births over deaths, 
during the war up to the end of 1917 the civil popu- 
lation in the 77 departments decreased by 883,169. 
The number of deaths in the army during the war, 
including those in barracks and hospitals, was at 
least 1,500,000. M. Poincare in January 1919 put 
it at 1,800,000, but he may have been including the 
black troops. To this have to be added the de- 
other hand the infant mortality (deaths of children from one day 
to one year old), which was 10-66 per cent, before the war, 
rose to 40 per cent, in 1918. In 1918 3,149 children were aban- 
doned to the Assistance Publique in the department of the Seine . 

E 



50 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

crease since 1917 in the civil population of the 77 
departments concerned, and that in the 11 invaded 
departments during the five years 1914-1918. 
When all these figures have been ascertained, it 
will be found that the population of France has 
decreased since 1913 by about three and a half 
millions. 

M. March insisted in his report on " the grave 
effects of the war on the state of the population " 
and on the consequences for the economic future 
of the country. He pointed out that the decrease 
has been mainly in the male population between 
the ages of sixteen and sixty-five, on whom pro- 
duction chiefly depends. Fifteen years hence, he 
said, the situation in this regard will be still more 
serious. Whereas the male population between 
the ages mentioned was at the last census (1911) 
12,300,000 in round figures, he estimated that 
it cannot exceed 10,300,000 in 1935, in conse- 
quence of the losses in the war and the 
diminution in the number of children born. 
Moreover, among the men between sixteen and 
sixty-five remaining about 350,000 have been 
completely disabled by the war, about 450,000 
are permanently injured without being completely 
disabled, and an unknown number have sustained 
in the war some physical or mental injury which, 
although it did not lead to their discharge from the 
army, is likely to diminish their producing power. 

The annexation of Alsace-Lorraine will, M. March 
said, add about 400,000 men between sixteen and 
sixty-five to the population of France, but they 
will not be sufficient to secure the production of the 
recovered provinces. It may be hoped in these cir- 
cumstances that the French Government will see 
the wisdom of allowing the German immigres in 
Alsace-Lorraine to opt for France if they wish ; but 



PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 51 

the policy of expelling them seems already to have 
been carried very far. It would have been wiser 
not to have been so hasty. At the last census, in 
1911, the population of France, without Alsace- 
Lorraine, was 39,601,509; as the result of the war 
France finds herself with a larger territory and a 
population (including Alsace-Lorraine) probably 
not much exceeding 37,500,000. 

There is, therefore, now a danger that the popu- 
lation of France will continue to decrease; it must 
do so without a considerable rise in the birth-rate, 
and the end of the process would be the extinction 
of the French race. The economic conditions are 
not such as to make a rise in the birth-rate prob- 
able, apart from the facts that the number of poten- 
tial fathers is greatly diminished and that a large 
proportion of the potential fathers are old or weak. 
Physical degeneration is an almost certain con- 
sequence of the war. It has been shown by Miche- 
let and others that the wars of Napoleon had a 
serious physical effect on the French people, includ- 
ing a considerable diminution of their average 
height, and the wars of Napoleon were nothing in 
comparison with this war, the effects of which must 
be still more serious. Since some two million 
women of the rising generation cannot find hus- 
bands among Frenchmen, France can be saved 
only by a large immigration of adult men or by a 
large number of illegitimate children, or by both. 
It becomes essential to the existence of the French 
people to encourage women to have children with- 
out marrying. But even the endowment of 
motherhood is not likely to raise the birth-rate im- 
mediately, for the economic conditions are likely 
to become worse in the near future and people will 
be more unwilling than ever to bring children into 
the world. Yet, even if the rate of increase in the 

E 2 



52 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

population of the period 1906-1911 were at once 
returned to, it would take at least half a century 
to bring the French population back to the figure 
of 1911. 

The economic and financial situation of France is 
a terrible one. Ten of her departments were in- 
vaded, and now that they have been recovered they 
are in a state of devastation. Whole towns and 
villages have been annihilated, and the most impor- 
tant industrial district in France has been laid 
waste by the three armies. For one of the most 
poignant circumstances of the war was that the 
Allied armies were compelled to bombard French 
towns ; for example, they entirely destroyed Lens, 
which was before the war a flourishing industrial 
town with 35,000 inhabitants, and did serious 
damage to St. Quentin, where only the four walls 
are left of the great collegiate church. In an article 
published in the Manchester Guardian on May 15, 
1919, the distinguished French economist, M. 
Francis Delaisi, said that France lost by the inva- 
sion 90 per cent, of her iron ore, 83 per cent, of her 
foundries, 50 per cent, of her coal; her wooHen 
industry lost 80 per cent, of its combing machines, 
84 per cent, of its spindles, 81 per cent, of its looms ; 
her cotton industry lost 59 per cent, of its spindles, 
and 70 per cent, of the French sugar factories were 
in the hands of the enemy. Altogether, M. Delaisi 
said, France was deprived by the invasion of 27,763 
factories, representing, according to the fiscal valua- 
tion in 1912, 30 per cent, of the value of all her fac- 
tories. It is true that in the course of the war new 
factories were set up in the uninvaded districts 
and the war industries were developed to such an 
extent that at the end of 1917 the number of work- 
men employed was 2 per cent, larger than in 1913, 
in spite of the millions of men at the front. The 



PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 53 

French ports, too, were greatly enlarged, improved 
machinery and methods were introduced and the 
output was increased. But these factories cannot 
permanently remain w^here they are, even when 
they have been adapted to peace production. The 
North is the part of France naturally suited to in- 
dustry, and the industry of the North must be 
restored; it will take years to restore it, especially 
if the Protectionist policy continues and the French 
market is closed to foreign manufactured goods. 
According to an official estimate, the reconstruction 
of the invaded territory will cost about 
£2,400,000,000.' This vast sum has to be found 
somehow by the State, except such part of it as can 
be obtained from Germany. Moreover, French com- 
merce has been paralysed by the war ; most of the 
foreign trade has gone to America, Japan and other 
countries and a large proportion of it will never 
return, or at any rate will not be recovered for many 
years. 

French national finance is in such a state that 
the financial problem seems insoluble. The 
National Debt, which in 1914 was £1,280,000,000, 
was at the beginning of 1919 £6,720,000,000. The 
interest on it at 5 per cent, (and the State is paying 
more than 5 per cent, on all war loans) is, there- 

1 M. Delaisi pointed out that the invaded regions suffered not 
only from artillery fire, but also from the " organised pillage " 
of the German army. He said : "A large proportion of our 
coal mines are flooded ; a third of our blast-furnaces are de- 
stroyed and the remaining two-thirds have been stripped of their 
machinery ; all the plant of the steel factories and rolling mills 
has been carried off to Germany ; in our spinning mills we have 
found only 40 per cent, of the spindles, 30 per cent, of the carded 
wool spindles and 30 per cent, of the cotton spindles. In our 
weaving factories only 40 per cent, of our wool looms, 20 per 
cent, of our cotton looms, and 10 per cent, of our cloth looms are 
left to us. Everywhere the stocks have been taken, the running 
plant carried off, the mill dams broken." {Manchester Guardian 
May 16, 1919.) 



54 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

fore, £336,000,000 a year ; before the war the total 
annual expenditure of France was only about 
£200,000,000. The national expenditure for the 
second quarter of 1919 was estimated at 
£520,000,000, and the revenue from taxes at only 
£112,000,000. Throughout the war the revenue 
from taxes has met only a small part of the ex- 
penditure and the interest on the National Debt 
has all been paid out of capital. Recourse has been 
had to the desperate expedients of loans at short 
term and a reckless issue of paper money. War 
Bonds (" Bons de la Defense Nationale ") were 
issued, repayable three, six, or twelve months after 
the date of issue; in January 1919 the value of 
these bonds issued and unredeemed was 
£920,000,000. The total value of the bank notes in 
circulation in May 1919 was £1,600,000,000, of 
which the sum of £1,080,000,000 was a loan from 
the Bank of France to the State to meet current 
expenditure. At the end of 1911 the value of the 
bank notes in circulation was £272,000,000, and 
even in August 1917 it was only £480,000,000; 
so that in the course of the twenty-two months 
between the latter date and May 1919 bank notes 
were issued to the value of £1,120,000,000. Against 
this huge issue of forced paper currency the Bank 
of France had in May 1919 a gold and silver 
reserve of only £234,000,000. If at any time the 
War Bonds as they became due were not renewed 
by their holders, or fresh ones were not taken out 
to replace them, the State would be unable to pay 
them and a catastrophe would be inevitable. The 
result of the enormous issue of paper money has 
been, of course, a depreciation of the currency. 
The rate of exchange was artificially kept up during 
the war, but when British and American financiers 
refused to go on bolstering it up it fell against 



PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 55 

France and is likely to go on falling, for the real 
value of the franc is probably not more than 
sixpence. 

In fact, the French State is insolvent, and it is 
becoming more and more evident that there is no 
solution of the problem except that of national 
bankruptcy. Unless France repudiates her 
National Debt she will be reduced to hopeless 
poverty. The national liabilities could be met, if 
at all, only by crushing taxation, which would 
mean misery for several generations of the French 
people. Throughout the war the bourgeoisie has 
refused to pay a high income tax in the insane delu- 
sion that the whole cost of the war could be 
obtained from Germany; even now, when it is ob- 
vious that that is impossible, the bourgeoisie refuses 
to make any serious sacrifices and will not 
hear of a levy on capital or even of an 
adequate income tax.^ In June 1919 new 
indirect taxes were imposed, although the cost 
of living in France was then four times what 
it had been in 1910, The rulers of France 
could suggest no solution of the financial pro- 
blem, and their attitude in the face of it was 
one of hopeless impotence. To ask the people 

^ The highest rate of income-tax, which until 1919 was only 
ten per cent., is now twenty per cent., and is not payable on 
the whole of even the largest incomes. The tax is not properly 
collected and there are heavy arrears. Capitalists engaged in 
trade or industry are allowed, instead of making a declaration 
of their real income, to pay on a valuation which is, of course, 
always much less than their actual profits. The same practice 
is followed in regard to the excess profit tax. which has in France 
produced a ridiculously small sum, merely because it is not 
properly enforced and the great majority of those liable to it 
escape the greater part of it. In no belligerent country have 
the rich contributed so little during the war as in France, or 
the poor so much in the way of indirect taxation. Every 
successive Government has favoured the rich at the expense of 
the poor in regard to taxation. 



56 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

of a country in such a pass as this to produce un- 
limited children would be madness. 

Immigration is the only method by which pro- 
duction can be secured and reconstruction made 
possible, for even a large increase in the birth-rate, 
if it were possible, could have no effect on produc- 
tion for several years to come. Unfortunately, the 
Nationalist sentiment produced by the war has 
led successive French Governments to introduce 
measures for the purpose of discouraging foreigners 
from settling in France and making naturalisation 
as difficult as possible. Ten years' residence is 
already necessary before a foreigner can be 
naturalised (except in special circumstances), and 
M. Viviani actually proposed when he was Prime 
Minister that even after naturalisation there should 
be another interval of ten years before political 
rights were acquired. In such conditions few would 
take the trouble to be naturalised. Such provisions 
would be senseless enough at any time, for it is to 
the interest of a country that persons living on its 
territory should be its citizens. Moreover, France is 
the country that has least to fear from immigration, 
since the French have an extraordinary power of 
assimilating foreigners; the children of foreigners 
born in France are usually as thoroughly French as 
those born of French parents. At this moment, 
when the very existence of France depends on 
immigration, such measures as those that have 
been proposed and in some cases passed are suicidal. 
France needs immediately at least a million and a 
half more adult men. Within the next fifteen years, 
as M. March has shown, she will need another half 
million. They can be found only in other countries, 
if they can be found at all. One of the first and 
essential conditions of reconstruction is to do 
everything possible to encourage immigration. 



PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 57 

There is no country that would not be the better 
for the infusion of new blood. All the great nations 
of the world are the result of a mixture of races — 
the French perhaps more than any, except the 
United States — and there is no reason why the 
process should not be continued. The immigrants 
would soon assimilate all that is best in French 
civilisation and culture and would bring to France 
qualities of their own which would enable the 
French nation not merely to recover itself, but 
also to become greater than ever. 

Unfortunately, the problem of reconstruction does 
not seem to be receiving in France the attention 
that it deserves. At a moment when the very 
existence of the nation is at stake the Government, 
the politicians, and a large section of the Press and 
the public seem to be much more concerned about 
strategic frontiers and territorial acquisitions than 
the really important matter, namely, what form 
reconstruction is to take and what changes are 
necessary in French institutions and methods to 
"make it effective. That is the matter which I 
propose to treat chiefly in this book in a spirit of 
profound attachment to France and sincere affec- 
tion for the French people among whom I have 
made my home. There is a preliminary question 
which has to be answered : Should France, as many 
Frenchmen think, aim at becoming a great in- 
dustrial nation ? As I have already said, my 
answer would be in the negative. The question, in 
fact, involves that of the art of living. The majority 
of people in our modern industrial conditions do not 
live at all, they simply exist. Is it possible to live 
in the full sense of the term in such horrible 
excrescences of capitalist society as Glasgow or 
Sheffield, which are no worse than other great 
industrial towns ? A man who voluntarily lives in 



58 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

such places in order to amass money is a fool to be 
despised; a man who lives in them because he 
must in order to keep body and soul together is 
a victim to be pitied. If Socialism does not sweep 
such places off the face of the earth it will not 
Justify itself. Industry must continue, the use of 
machinery must be still further developed, but the 
industrial worker must be emancipated from an 
environment of sordid ugliness and be given time 
and opportunity to live. It would not hurt a man 
to work, say, four or even six hours a day at a 
machine if the rest of his time were his own to work 
or play as he pleased, and if the treasures of art and 
nature were open to him. 

But so long as the capitalist system continues a 
country like France, in a position to enjoy great 
prosperity without a great development of industry, 
is indeed fortunate. Which is the happier : the life 
of a wine-grower in Burgundy or Champagne or the 
Gironde, or Touraine, or that of an industrial, 
whether employer or workman, in Lille or Tour- 
coing or Roubaix ? No doubt the most prosperous 
wine-grower makes less money than the industrial 
magnate, but he is far richer in all that makes life 
worth living. He has the sun, the trees, the 
flowers, the vineyards on the southern hillsides ,^ 
and above all leisure, except during the short busy 
periods of the year. There would be no progress 
in substituting furnaces and factory chimneys for 
the vineyards and cornfields, the orchards and 
gardens of Touraine, in befouling the Loire with 
chemicals, or in converting Tours or Bordeaux, 
Toulouse or Dijon, into imitations of Manchester 
or Birmingham. It is true that the system on 
which French agriculture is at present conducted 
involves in many parts of France excessive and 
quite unnecessary labour and that the peasant 



PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 59 

farmer as distinct from the wine-grower is often 
brutalised by stupid and monotonous toil. But the 
remedy is to change the system. With modern 
methods and a full use of agricultural machinery 
France might produce more than she does at present 
with half the labour. The one great advantage that 
France has in her present economic and financial 
crisis is the fact that her most important industry- 
agriculture — can be at once resumed and does not 
need years to recover itself. The land is still there, 
and although much of it has gone out of cultivation 
during the war or been only imperfectly cultivated, 
a couple of years would set everything right. Here 
is the point on which attention should first have 
been concentrated rather than on schemes for 
appropriating the coal of the Saar Valley. 

This does not mean that France is to have no 
industry at all ; but the policy of artificially foster- 
ing industries by Protection should be discontinued. 
If and when the nations of the world have the 
sense to adopt universal Free Trade, every country 
will have those industries, and only those, which 
are natural to it. Meanwhile, the French people 
would do well to consider whether they would not 
be wise to adopt Free Trade without waiting for 
every other country to do so. The experience of 
France has proved the folly of the notion that 
Protection can be limited to raw material or limited 
in any way whatever. There is no practical 
alternative between Free Trade and all-round 
Protection. The Protectionist reaction began in 
France more than thirty years ago with the pretext 
of limiting protective duties to certain commodities. 
But high Protection raised prices and the un- 
protected trades, which had to pay more for 
everything they bought, soon insisted on being 
protected in their turn. No definition of raw 



60 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

material is possible. Cloth and silk, for instance, 
are manufactured articles, but they are the raw 
material of the tailor and the dressmaker. At the 
present moment, the cloth and silk manufacturers 
demand that the importation of cloth and silk 
should be restricted, and the clothing trades, which 
are among the most important industries in France, 
demand their unrestricted importation. The 
former declare that they will be ruined if imports 
are not limited ; the latter say, with truth, that they 
are being ruined by the limits tion of imports. The 
solution of the problem, as of most others, is 
liberty. In the long run liberty, whether it be a 
question of opinion or of commodities, does less 
harm than restriction. It has its drawbacks, but 
this is an imperfect world. 

The results of Protection have been so disastrous 
in France that a reaction against it is beginning. 
The lack of instruction on economic questions has 
hitherto prevented an organised movement in 
favour of Free Trade. Even the Socialist Party has 
not yet realised the importance of the matter. 
Two or three years ago I had a long conversation 
with a Socialist Deputy on this very question* 
After listening with interest to my arguments in 
favour of Free Trade, he said : " That is a very 
interesting subject ; I never thought about it 
before." His case is, unfortunately, typical. Yet 
universal Free Trade, which is the suppression of 
economic frontiers, is essential to Internationalism 
— it is, in fact, economic Internationalism — and 
Internationalism is essential to Socialism. But 
some of the results of Protection are so obvious that 
they cannot be ignored. The urban populations 
see that the price of food is artificially kept up and 
is much higher than in England. Many industries 
find themselves seriously hampered by the high 



PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 61 

price of their raw materials. Protection has ruined 
the French mercantile marine. Commodities such 
as coal, of which France does not produce nearly 
enough for her own use, are protected nevertheless. 
The result is a Coal Trust which even in peace time 
kept the price of coal in Paris at about three times 
what it was in London; the duty and the cost of 
transport accounted perhaps for about twenty per 
cent, of the difference. For one of the charms of 
Protection is that it almost invariably raises prices 
by a great deal more than the actual amount of 
the duty. Some of the vagaries of Protection are 
grotesque ; for instance, there is an import duty on 
bananas, although they are not grown in France, in 
order to keep up their price in the supposed interest 
of French growers of apples and pears. French 
butter is cheaper in England than in France, and 
I have gone from Paris to London to find French 
grapes being sold there at. a lower price than in 
Paris. On the other hand, certain industries have 
been artifically promoted by Protection, with 
results not always purely economic. The metal- 
lurgical industries, in particular, have been 
developed far beyond the needs of the country and 
have become immensely powerful. Their in- 
fluence in politics and on the Press is most 
pernicious; while they have worked hand in hand 
with the same industries in other countries, in- 
cluding Germany, as frequent revelations have 
shown, they have spent enormous sums in pro- 
moting Chauvinist feeling in order to obtain orders 
for armaments. They were the chief promoters of 
the agitation for the annexation of the Saar Valley, 
and there is good reason for believing that they 
prevented the bombardment of the mines of Briey 
when the latter were held by the Germans. 
In the French colonies- Protectionism has done 



62 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

even more harm than in France itself. The colonies 
are compelled to pay import duty on their products 
imported into France, whereas French products 
enter the colonies duty free, heavy duties being 
imposed on imports from other countries. The 
natural result has been the ruin of the colonies thus 
exploited without any regard for their own interests 
and development. An international agreement 
jjrevents the application of this system to the 
French Congo, which is consequently the only really 
prosperous colony. The disastrous economic results 
of the Protectionist policy in the colonies have been 
frequently pointed out in the Temps, and the late 
M. Pascal Ceccaldi exposed them in detail in his 
able report on the Colonial Budget presented to the 
Chamber of Deputies in 1915. The policy has had 
equally disastrous political results, for it has in- 
evitably excited jealousy of the French Colonial 
Empire on the part of other countries, whose 
economic interests were threatened by French 
Colonial expansion. Jealousy of the British Empire 
has greatly diminished since the adoption of Free 
Trade, for if a colony has Free Trade, or if the 
imports into it of all countries have equal treat- 
ment, it is not a matter of great importance to what 
country it belongs. If, on the other hand, the 
acquisition of a colony by a particular nation means 
that it will be closed to the trade of all others, it is 
impossible that the other nations can view it with 
equanimity. Nobody can read the French Yellow 
Books on Morocco without being convinced that 
what influenced the whole German attitude and 
policy in that matter was fear that, if Morocco came 
under French influence, it would ultimately be 
closed to the trade of other countries. The Anglo- 
French Agreement of 1904 provided for the open 
door in Morocco for thirty years, but it left France 



PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 63 

free to close it at the end of that time. Moreover, 
confidence in that agreement was necessarily 
destroyed by the existence of the secret clauses 
which contradicted some of the most important 
provisions of the public treaty. I have always 
been convinced that the discovery of the existence 
of the secret clauses — probably from a Russian 
source, for they had been communicated to Russia 
as the Ally of France — was the cause of the German 
Emperor's sensational visit to Tangiers in 1905. 
It would not have been unreasonable to conclude 
that, since England and France had deceived the 
world on the question of the integrity and indepen- 
dence of Morocco, no reliance could be placed on 
their guarantee of the open door for thirty years. 
The Moroccan dispute brought France and Germany 
to the verge of war in 1905 and again in 1911 ; 
without any doubt it was one of the ultimate causes 
of the recent war, which was, on the part of 
Germany, partly a " preventive war," partly a 
war for colonial expansion. Protectionism will 
always lead to war and universal Free Trade 
is one of the essential conditions of permanent 
peace. One of the most necessary factors in French 
reconstruction is, then, a thorough reform of the 
whole colonial system, which is far more important 
to France than any extension of territory. Indeed, 
France of all countries least needs more territory; 
her colonial empire is already larger than she can 
conveniently manage and its resources are far 
from being fully developed; she has no surplus 
population for colonising purposes and Frenchmen 
will not go to the colonies unless they happen to be 
officials. Even in Tunis there are many more 
Itahans than Frenchmen, although the Mediter- 
ranean Basin is particularly suitable for French 
colonisation. Indeed France would have done well 



64 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

to have concentrated her colonising efforts on the 
Mediterranean, where experience has shawn that 
Southern Frenchmen and Italians are the most 
successful colonists, and to have left Asia and other 
parts of Africa alone. 

In any case, any further extension of French 
territory would be a grave blunder which could 
only do injury to France. The Third Republic 
has already added to the French dominions territory 
with an aggregate area larger than that of the 
United States of America; it is time to stop. 
History gives many examples of nations that have 
come to grief by over-expansion — ^Poland was one 
of them — and France is at a turning point in her 
history where she cannot afford to take any risks. 
She needs to concentrate all her energies on the 
restoration and development of her existing 
resources, which are immense, and which have not 
yet been used to their full extent. To that end she 
must reorganise, not only her colonial system, but 
her agriculture and her industries, and the first and 
most necessary step is to set them free from the 
trammels of State interference and to finish with 
the policy of artificially limiting production and 
bolstering up prices. The absurdity of Protection 
is admirably illustrated by the case of Alsace- 
Lorraine : for the last half-century it has been 
" protected " against France ; it is now presumably, 
in consequence of the change in its political 
allegiance, to be " protected " against Germany. 
The change will probably be very injurious to the 
inhabitants of the re-annexed provinces, whose real 
interest, like that of everybody else, is to be able to 
buy and sell freely in all the markets of the world. 

Protection, however, far from being gradually 
diminished as it ought to be, has actually been 
aggravated since the Armistice, indeed it has been 



PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 65 

carried to its logical conclusion. The profiteers are 
no longer content with heavy import duties; they 
insist on the prohibition of imports. They are no 
longer content to keep up prices by limiting pro- 
duction; they demand and obtain from the 
Government the bolstering up of prices by legal 
decree. Early in 1919, because the French paper 
maniifacturers, who are in fact a powerful Trust, 
had large stocks of paper in hand and the price of 
paper was beginning to fall, M. Loucheur, the 
Minister of Reconstruction, fixed by decree mini- 
mum prices of paper above its market value. Such 
was M. Loucheur's notion of reconstruction — and 
this is not surprising, since M. Loucheur himself is 
interested in a large number of industrial concerns 
and has made a huge fortune during the war. It 
was the great war magnates of industry who 
manoeuvred him into the Ministry of Reconstruc- 
tion. It was an easy matter, since, as I have 
already said, M. Clemenceau knows nothing of 
economic questions and takes no interest in them ; 
no doubt he quite innocently imagined that the best 
Minister of Reconstruction would be a successful 
business man. Once in the Ministry of Reconstruc- 
tion, M. Loucheur adopted the policy that suited 
his friends, and explained to the country that the 
prohibition of imports was necessary to keep up 
the rate of exchange.^ All importation was 

1 The great French war magnates of industry " have succeeded 
in putting one of their number, the most active and the inost 
intelligent, at the head of the Ministry charged with controlling 
them. To him. Minister and man of business, representing at 
the same time both the nation and those who supply it, falls 
the task of showing that the interests of his two employers are 
identical. He has done it with remarkable cleverness by evoking 
the spectre of the exchange. ' Take care,' he says, ' if you buy 
English cloth or American machines, you are going to depreciate 
our currency.' The French public, including the members of 
Parliament, are not familiar with the machinery of international 

F 



66 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

forbidden without the express permission of the 
Ministry of Reconstruction, except in the case of 
raw material in the most restricted sense of 
the term — " matieres brutes " as distinct from 
'"• matieres premieres " in general. The Roubaix 
spinners were prevented by the Government from 
importing machinery that they had bought in 
America, Ford motor-cars bought by the State were 
left to rust in the port of Bordeaux, although there 
were no motor-cars to be had in France, and, 
whereas the clothing trades estimated the minimum 
quantity of imported cloth and dress material that 
they would require for the second quarter of 1919 
at 9,000 tons, they were allowed to import during 
that period less than 1,000 tons.^ 

The " spectre of the exchange," to use 
M. Delaisi's phrase, for a time obtained general 
acquiescence in this " economic Malthusianism," as 
M. Gustave Tery, editor of UCEuvre, has happily 
called it, but as the exchange fell against France in 
spite of the prohibition of imports, and as several 
industries besides the clothing trades suffered 
severely from the prohibition, public opinion began 
to change. An energetic and most useful cam- 
paign against M. Loucheur's policy was carried on 
in L'CEuvre, which frankly advocated Free Trade, 
and — what was most significant of all — the General 
Confederation of Labour in a manifesto issued on 

payments. But they are very much alive to the idea that the 
bank-note of a hundred francs which they have in their pocket 
may become worth only eighty. They have seen in imports the 
spectre of bankruptcy ; and deputies, Press, public, everybody 
has approved the policy of M. Loucheur." (M. Francis Delaisi, 
Manchester Guardian, May 15, 1919.) 

1 Perhaps the most astonishing example of this policy was the 
refusal of the French Government either to buy itself or aUow 
anybody else to buy any of the unused material and supplies 
of the American Army. The refusal provoked such strong 
protests that the Government was ultimately obliged to yield to 
public opinion and purchase the whole stock. 



PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 67 

June 11, 1919, denounced " the closing of the 
frontiers " and prohibitive tariffs as being among 
the principle causes of the high cost of living and 
declared that they would bring France to ruin and 
violence. The manifesto asked whether the 
Government was in the hands of private interests 
or whether it had no conception of the general 
interest. 

I fear that there can be no doubt that the 
Government — or rather M. Loucheur — was in- 
fluenced by regard for private rather than public 
interests. The story of this conspiracy to sacrifice 
the interests of the French people to those of a few 
capitalists is so disgraceful that I prefer to leave a 
Frenchman to tell it and will simply quote the 
account of it given with consummate irony by 
M. Delaisi in his article in the Manchester Guardian 
already referred to. As I have said, during the war 
factories were established in the uninvaded territory 
to supply the Government with war material; in 
many cases they were established by manufacturers 
that had escaped from the invaded districts, to 
whom the Government lent capital without interest 
when they required it. All these factories were 
working at high pressure when the Armistice came. 
It was hurriedly decided, M. Delaisi said, to adapt 
the workshops to peace uses, but this would take 
time. Meanwhile. American and English missions 
hurried to France and " offered us," said M. Delaisi, 
"whatever we needed and at a low price." But 
this would not suit the French manufacturers, who 
would have " to produce less, to sell cheaper, to 
forego fat dividends and big salaries — those compen- 
sations for dear living." Moreover, " the greater 
part of the new industries had been established in 
unfavourable conditions. Far from the sources of 
their raw materials, or from their markets, the net 

F 2 



68 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

costs would be burdened with heavy transport 
charges. That did not matter so long as they were 
working for the State, which always paid very well. 
But if one opened the market to foreign competition 
it was clear that many of our factories placed in 
exceptional and artificial positions would not be 
able to survive. Certainly their owners would not 
be ruined by that, for the greater number of them 
had had all their capital repaid in interest in four 
years ; but one does not easily resign oneself to 
closing down a business when it is doing well, which 
has cost so much trouble and yielded such good 
profits." So the chief manufacturers agreed on the 
policy of closing the French market to all manu- 
factured goods and restricting the importations 
" to absolutely indispensable materials — coal, steel, 
sheet-iron, wool and cotton," and this was the 
policy adopted by their representative at the 
Ministry of Reconstruction. It will take hardly 
more than a year or two, when the factories have 
been converted, to restore industry in uninvaded 
France, and, meanwhile the invaded districts 
must wait. Instead of reconstructing the invaded 
territory as quickly as possible and enabling its 
industry to be revived, the policy was adopted of 
exploiting the invaded territory for the benefit of 
factories working in artificial conditions and, there- 
fore, at a disadvantage in regard to the foreign 
market. 

" Happily we have at hand " — I quote M. Delaisi 
— " inside our own frontiers a new land, a country 
known to be exceedingly rich. The soil is fertile, 
coal and iron abundant. There all is destroyed; 
everything has to be remade — mine shafts, props, 
blast furnaces, steel factories, weaving mills, 
buildings, towns, farms, agricultural implements. 
Work costing sixty milliards is waiting to be, done 



PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 69 

there, according to the oflBciai report. What more 
extensive markets could you dream of ? What is 
Morocco, what is Indo-China compared with these 
ten departments waiting to be rebuilt ? But it is 
essential that Allied products should not penetrate 
them, for in a year or so reconstruction would come 
to an end and by the time our factories were ready 
the market would have disappeared. Let us close 
them, then, to the foreign importer as we have 
closed Algeria or Madagascar. We have no diplo- 
matic difficulties to fear; the devastated regions, 
happily, are in France. Already a Reconstruction 
Office controls all buying from outside, and it has 
forbidden anybody to import the least thing without 
its permission. At this rate the reconstruction 
process will doubtless be a little slow. M. Loucheur 
stated in Parliament that it would not begin 
seriously for two years. It will take at least two 
years more to re-establish our steel works, five or 
six to set certain mines going, and, according to an 
official report, all the houses cannot be rebuilt for 
sixteen years. It seems that our devastated 
regions will have to wait until the factories behind 
them are ready to work for them. They wUl have 
to regulate their needs to suit the convenience of 
those who will supply them. It would be wrong to 
exhaust too quickly a market like this. It is 
necessary to avoid jolts, to stabilise production so 
as to prevent crises, to make sure of big dividends, 
and to prepare for gradual liquidation. As to the 
refugees, there is no need to trouble about them. 
The majority of the great manufacturers of the 
north and east have set up their factories behind the 
war zone. They are more concerned about the 
prosperity of those who are doing well than of those 
who are ruined. As to the workmen, in the past 
four years many of them have become accustomed 



70 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

to working in new districts. As to the peasants, 
so attached to the place of their birth, so eager to 
restore their ruined farms, the providential in- 
difference of the Government officials has already 
succeeded in discouraging them. The greater part 
of those who went back in the first days have been 
maddened by the delays and are returning. Thus 
the new industries born of the war, well protected 
against foreign competition, assured of an impor- 
tant market on the spot, can develop at their ease 
and look to the future with confidence."^ 

The cynical indifference of the capitalist classes 
to the general welfare of the community could 
hardly be better illustrated than by this plot to 
exploit the miseries and sufferings caused by the 
invasion for the benefit of a few profiteers. Nor 
could there be a better example of the working of 
Protection, for the plot is only a logical application 
of Protectionist principles, which mean the sacri- 
fice of the many to the few. Since M. Delaisi's 
article was written the prohibition of imports has 
been cancelled in regard to a considerable number 
of products, but the relief is little more than 
nominal, for import duties have been increased all 
round, in some cases as much as 200 per cent., in 
order to protect the profiteers. Many imports are 
subject, in addition, to the ad valorem luxury tax 
of 10 per cent.^ 

The domination of the great industrial magnates, 

1 Manchester Guardian, May 15, 1919. 

2 The neglect by the Government of the devastated region 
has caused such profound discontent among the inhabitants 
that they have taken the matter into their own hands and 
formed a " States-General " with local branches everywhere. 
There is a strong feeling among them in favour of decentralisation 
and they have declared war on the bureaucracy. Ten months 
after the Armistice nothing had been done even to begin the 
restoration of the invaded districts and many places were stjjl 
without drinking water, 



PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 71 

of which these restrictions are the result, is a grave 
evil, and France must be freed from it if she is to 
recover herself. She must also be freed from the 
domination of the financiers. In all countries the 
influence of High Finance is very great — it is the 
inevitable result of the modern capitalist system 
and, so long as that system continues, it will go on 
increasing — but in no country are the financiers so 
powerful as in France. The great banks and the 
financial interests control the Government, Parlia- 
ment, and the Press to a very great extent, and their 
power is all the more dangerous since it works in 
secret and is not visible to the public. The public 
does not and cannot know, for instance, that behind 
this or that Press campaign, which seems to be 
actuated by patriotic motives, are the influence 
and the funds of some great financiers in whose 
interest the campaign has really been started ; that 
the opposition in Parliament to this or that reform 
is really instigated by the financial interests work- 
ing in the lobbies and using every form of pressure 
on senators and deputies. I confess that I see no 
remedy for this state of things except that of a 
complete change in the social and economi3 system. 
Anti-semitism is not a remedy, for the great 
financiers are by no means all Jews; some of them 
are excellent Catholics. Indeed anti-semitism 
plays the game of the financiers and the capitalists 
bv diverting attention from the real causes of the 
evil. If the French or any other people could be 
convinced that what really mattered was not the 
svstem which makes financiers possible, but the 
shape of the financiers' noses, that would be an 
excellent thing for those financiers whose noses 
happened to be straight. The anti-semitic move- 
ment in France in the last decade of the nineteenth 
century strengthened the financial interests and 



72 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

also turned out ultimately to the advantage of the 
Jews. When the public discovered the baselessness 
of the charges made against the Jews, it jumped 
to the conclusion that the financiers were less 
mischievous than had been supposed, and it came 
to be thought reactionary to say anything against 
a Jew even when he deserved it. At the bottom of 
much anti-semitism is the notion that it is the 
cosmopolitanism of High Finance that is the 
danger, as if the war had not shown that it is 
Nationalism that is the enemy of humanity. In 
fact, the only advantage of High Finance is that, 
being cosmopolitan, it is always an influence for 
peace. It helped to prevent war in 1911 and the 
fact that it failed to stop it in 1914 only proves that 
even cosmopolitan Finance is as powerless as the 
Christian religion to stem the tide of national 
hatreds and patriotic rabies. 

The chief reasons for the exceptional power 
and influence of the financiers in France are 
p/obably the centralised administration and the 
commercial timidity which leads the great majority 
of French investors to refuse their money to in- 
dustrial enterprises and prefer safe securities such 
as Government loans. This has made France the 
money-lending country of the world, and in a 
money-lending country the money-lender is 
naturally top dog. 



CHAPTER III 

THE ADMINISTRATIVE AND POLITICAL SYSTEMS 

" The PengTiin State was democratic. Three or four financial 
companies exercised in it a power more extensive and above all 
more effective and constant than that of the Ministers of the 
Republic, petty potentates whom the companies secretly managed, 
whom they obliged by intimidation or corruption to favour 
them at the expense of the State, and whom they destroyed by 
calunuiies in the Press when they remained honest." — Anatolb 
France 

No people are more ready than the French to 
admit that their political institutions are defective ; 
indeed they are inclined to exaggerate their defects. 
Most Frenchmen will tell you that politicians are 
without exception a set of unprincipled and self- 
seeking intriguers actuated by nothing but a desire 
to improve their own position financially or other- 
wise, that Parliament does nothing but talk, that 
one Government is as bad as another, and that the 
Administration is corrupt from top to bottom and 
hopelessly incompetent. It is a curious paradox 
that, whereas Frenchmen are often inclined to look 
upon the State as a sort of universal providence and 
to appeal to it on every possible occasion, they 
nevertheless have the lowest possible opinion of it 
and take for granted that it will mismanage any- 
thing that it touches. Naturally the French are 

73 



74 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

individualists ; by tradition and training they are 
often "Etatistes."! 

Some Frenchmen attribute the defects that they 
find in their political institutions to democracy. 
There has been, partly on that account, a consider- 
able reaction during recent years in the bourgeoisie 
against democratic institutions and the republican 
form of government. The reaction has been par- 
ticularly marked among the intellectuals, many cf 
whom have passed from democratic and even revo- 
lutionary opinions to the advocacy of " strong 
government " and increased authority, and even of 
Royalism pure and simple. And Royalism in 
France in its only active form means the restoration 
of absolute Monarchy. The CoDstitutional Mon- 
archists — the old traditional Orleanists — have nearly 
all rallied quite sincerely to the Republic and are 
sometimes stronger defenders of popular liberties 
and constitutional guarantees than many so-called 
Radicals. For, as the late M. Paul Thurpnn- 
Dangin explained to me some years ago, he and his 
friends, although they preferred a constitutional 
Monarchy to a Republic, came to the conclusion 
that the former was impossible in France and 
therefore rallied to the Republic, since nothing 
would induce them to accept an absolute Monarchy. 

^. For this word, as for " ^tatisme," there is no exact English 
equivalent, for " State Socialism " is not an accurate trans- 
lation. " Etatisme " need not necessarily be socialist in any 
sense of the term. *' Statism " would be a literal translation, 
but it is an ugly word, and it would be impossible to translate 
" 6tatiste " by " statist," which has already another meaning. 
The nearest English equivalent of " Etatisme " is " State 
Capitalism," but again it is impossible to use the term " State 
Capitalist " for " 6tatiste." On the whole it seems best to use 
the French words : after all the purist objection to the adoption 
of any foreign term is rather pedantic. We have in the past 
adopted many foreign words, which have now become part of the 
language. 



THE ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM 75 

The fate of Louis-Philippe shows, in fact, that a 
constitutional Monarchy has no chance of success in 
France ; the Monarchy of July was in many respects 
the best regime that France had during the nine- 
teenth century — it was certainly the most pacific — 
but it did not last. The logical French mind re- 
garded a constitutional Monarchy as an absurdity ; 
Louis-Philippe was ridiculed as a bourgeois king 
perpetually armed with an umbrella. And 
indeed, whatever may be said for the British system, 
which has grown up gradually, it is an absurdity to 
set up a constitutional Monarchy deliberately, since 
there is no advantage in making the presidency of a 
Republic hereditary. The only active Royalist 
party in France is now represented by the organisa- 
tion known as the Action Frangaise, of which 
M. Charles Maurras and M. Leon Daudet are the 
leaders. Its organ in the Press, which has the same 
title, is notorious for the scurrility of its attacks on 
Republicans and its incitations to the assassination 
of prominent French public men, which had so 
deplorable a result in the case of Jaures, but which 
have, nevertheless, been allowed to continue with 
astonishing impunity by successive Governments 
during the war. The Action Frangaise advocates 
the suppression of Parliament, the abolition of 
democracy, and the establishment of an absolute 
Monarchy; it attacks the old Royalists that will 
not accept its programme with even greater 
virulence than Republicans. It is the centre of the 
anti-democratic reaction and derives whatever force 
it may possess from the general dissatisfaction with 
the present regime. 

It is not, however, true that whatever defects 
there may be in the present French political 
institutions — and, as I have said, those defects are 
often exaggerated by Frenchmen themselves — are 



76 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

due to democracy. It cannot be true, since French 
political institutions are not democratic. France 
has a Royalist Constitution and a Bonapartist 
Administration. " Plus 5a change, plus c'est la 
meme chose," is a French proverb and France is 
the country of which it is true. Herein is to be 
found one of the greatest differences between France 
and England : in England we preserve the form and 
change the substance — we cling to old forms such as 
the Monarchy when they are emptied of meaning 
and have ceased to have any practical use; in 
France they make apparently complete changes in 
the form and preserve the substance. To a super- 
ficial observer it would appear that drastic changes 
were made in France in 1870, but, in fact, the 
changes were mainly external ; in reality very 
little was changed. The present French system of 
administration is in all essentials and in spirit the 
system founded by Napoleon I, highly centralised 
in order to concentrate all real power in the hands 
of the National Executive and thoroughly anti- 
democratic. And in all countries the administra- 
tion is more important than the legislature, for the 
legislature makes laws, but the administration 
applies them — or refrains from doing so. More- 
over, the administration comes into direct contact 
with the daily life of the people, whose happiness 
depends on its character and methods more than o^ 
the letter of the law. A country might get on very 
well without a Parliament as we understand it, and 
would probably get on better without a Govern- 
ment, but it could not exist without administra- 
tion. Government and administration are two 
different things, as Saint-Simon recognised when he 
proposed that the administration of things should 
be substituted for the government of men — ^the 
State as an organ of administration for the State as 



THE ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM 77 

an organ of authority. M. Emile Vandervelde has 
given a lucid exposition of the distinction between 
these two functions of the State in his admirable 
little book " Le Socialisme centre I'Etat."^ The 
undemocratic or rather anti-democratic character 
of the French administration is therefore even 
more important and more pernicious in its results 
than the undemocratic elements in the French 
Constitution. It is particularly because the English 
administrative system is more democratic than the 
French that England, although not yet a demo- 
cracy, is politically the more democratic country of 
the two, although it preserves monarchical and 
aristocratic forms which have lost their substance, 
and although its people are less democratic in spirit 
than the French. 

In the case of the administration there was not 
even a nominal change in France after the fall of 
the Second Empire; the constitutional laws by 
which the Third Republic functions left the ad- 
ministration untouched. And the system that they 
left untouched was the administrative system of 
Napoleon I, which had survived without any 
important modification all the successive regimes 
of the nineteenth century — the Restoration, the 
Monarchy of July, the Second Republic, and the 
Second Empire. The dead hand of Napoleon is still 
laid on France. That the system of Napoleon was 
admirably adapted to the purposes for which he 
designed it cannot be questioned ; Napoleon was one 
of the greatest geniuses that the world has ever 
seen and he usually hit on the best means of obtain- 
ing his ends. If the ideal be the concentration of 
all power in the hands of an individual or a central 
bureaucracy, then the French system of administra- 

* Page 62. Paris, Berger-Levrault. English translation pub- 
lished by Kerr, Chicago, U.S.A. 



78 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

tion is an ideal one ; but it is totally unsuited to a 
Republic or even to a constitutional Monarchy 
professing to be based on democracy. Local 
government is really mainly in the hands of the 
Prefects, who represent the Government in 
each department and whose powers are still 
enormous, although the Third Republic has some- 
what extended the power of the local elected 
authorities. Each commune in France has a 
municipal council elected by manhood suffrage, 
but it can do very little without the consent of the 
central administration, whose approval is required 
for such purely local matters as the making of a 
new street or even a change in the name of an old 
one. It is to be regretted that in the latter case 
the consent of the central authority is given much 
too easily, with the result that all over France 
streets whose names were part of the history of the 
country have been rebaptised. One need not be a 
clerical to regret the suppression in many French 
towns of all street names that are those of saints, 
nor need one be a bad Republican to regret the too 
frequent attempts to obliterate everything that 
recalls a former regime. Troyes is one of the towns 
where this lack of historical sense has expressed 
itself with the most ruthless universality, sometimes 
it would seem out of sheer perversity. Anti-clerical 
feeling is no doubt responsible for the conversion of 
the rue Notre-Dame into the rue Emile-Zola, but 
what could have induced a municipal council to 
suppress so delicious a title as " rue des Trois- 
Pucelles," with its mediseval flavour, in favour of 
the name of an obscure general ? This vandalism 
is a striking example of the iconoclasm of the 
French, and perhaps also of their excessive suscep- 
tibility to the influence of words and phrases. The 
founders of each new regime have thought to 



THE ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM 79 

consolidate it by obliterating all traces of its prede- 
cessor. Alas ! France had no less than nine regimes 
— if the Directorate and the Consulate be considered 
separate ones — in the course of the nineteenth 
century, and I do not think that the survival of 
the Third Republic is due to the fact that there is 
no longer a Place Royale in Paris. 

In other matters, however, the central authority 
is much less complacent, and many deficiencies in 
local administration are due, at least in part, to the 
paralysing control of the Government. Since 
1884 the municipal councils have been allowed 
to elect their own mayors, who up to that time were 
appointed by the Government, but the Government 
still has the power to depose the mayor, and even 
to dismiss the whole council at its will and plea- 
sure.^ The unofficial authority exercised by the 
Prefect and his subordinates, the sub-prefects, is 
even more pernicious than their official powers ; 
their position as the channels of favours and dis- 
favours, of rewards and punishments, enables them 
to exert pressure and gives them enormous 
influence, to which the only counterpoise is the 
equally pernicious influence of Senators and 
Deputies. France will never be a democratic 
country until the Prefects and sub-prefects are 
abolished and much larger powers are given to the 

^ The Prefect has the power to suspend a mayor for not more 
than a month ; the period of suspension may be increased to 
three months by the Minister of the Interior. A mayor can be 
deposed only by a Presidential Decree on the advice of the 
Government. In either case the mayor concerned can appeal to 
the Conseil d'Etat, but, as the law does not specify the reasons 
for which a mayor may be suspended or deposed, an appeal 
can be successful only on technical grounds of procedure. The 
Prefect can also suspend a whole municipal council for not more 
than a month, but must at once report the suspension to the 
Minister of the Interior. The dissolution of a municipal council 
requires a Presidential Decree. There ia no appeal except on 
purely technical grounds. 



80 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

local authorities. The conseils-g^nSraucc and 
conseils d^arrondissement, which answer to the 
county councils and district councils in England, 
have even less power than the municipalities.^ 
The Prefect is present at the meetings of the conseil- 
general of his department and objects whenever it 
attempts to go beyond the narrow limits assigned 
to it. The municipal council of Paris is even more 
in leading strings than those of other great towns ; 
the Prefect of the Seine and the Prefect of Police 
have the right to attend its meetings. 

French education is as highly centralised as every- 
thing else. Napoleon deprived the universities of 
their independence and autonomy, and the Univer- 
sity is now a vast national organisation under the 
control of the Ministry of Public Instruction, which 
comprises all the public educational institutions in 
France from the elementary school up to the 
university in the English sense of the term. There 
is no variety in the schools ; the ideal is that in 
every school of the same class throughout the 
country the pupils should be doing exactly the 
same thing at exactly the same hour. There are no 
local education authorities,^ and all the educational 

^ The conseil-gdndral of a department (answering to a county 
covincil) is composed of one representative of each canton in 
the department, no matter what the population of the canton 
may be. It may meet only twice a year, in the Spring and in 
August ; the duration of the Spring session must not exceed a 
fortnight, and that of the August session a month. The Govern- 
ment may convene a conseU-giniral when it chooses, and the 
Prefect must convene it on the written demand of two -thirds of 
its members : an extraordinary session thus convened must not 
last longer than a week. The powers of the conseil-giniral are 
very limitod and principally concern the finances of the depart- 
ment. 

* There is a '* Council of Primary Instruction " in each depiart- 
ment consisting of the Prefect, the chief School Inspector 
(" Inspecteur d'aoad^mie "), four delegates from the conseil- 
g^ndral, four elementary school teachers (two men and two 



THE ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM 81 

staff from the elementary-school teacher to the 
university professor are appointed or revoked, pro- 
moted or degraded, by the Government, which 
moves them from one place to another at will. This 
means in practice that the career of an elementary- 
school teacher, at any rate, depends on enjoying 
the favour of the Prefect and of the local Senators 
and Deputies. The one power in regard to educa- 
tion that is left to a local authority is the very one 
that ought not to be — the enforcement of the law 
in regard to compulsory attendance at school. The 
authority whose duty it is to enforce it is the mayor, 
with the result that it is not enforced in the rural 
districts because the mayor dares not prosecute his 
constituents. In the, greater part of rural France 
all, or nearly all, the children go to school because 
their parents are enlightened enough to understand 
the value of education ; in Champagne, for example, 
nearly all the parents sent their children to school 
before education was made compulsory. But in the 
reactionary districts the children are sent to work in 
the fields at the age of eight — although child-labour 
is illegal — and go to school intermittently, or in 
some cases not at all. In general, school attend- 
ance is regular in anti-clerical districts and irregu- 
lar in districts where the Church is strong. Many 
of the country clergy denounce the schools from the 
pulpit and provide the peasants with a religious dis- 
guise for the avarice and selfishness which make 

women) elected by their colleagues, and two school inspectors 
nominated by the Minister of Public Instruction. But this 
council, which meets as a rule only four times a year, has only 
powers of supervision and recommendation. Its chief duty is 
to see that the regulations are observed in the schools ; it has 
no real share in their management and no voice in the appoint- 
ment of teachers. The Council of Primary Instruction appoints 
one or more delegates to look after the schools in each canton 
of the department and repor* to it as to their conduct. 

G 



82 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

them deprive their children of education in order to 
exploit their labour. For years people interested 
in education in France have been demanding that 
the enforcement of the compulsory education law 
should be taken out of the hands of the mayors and 
entrusted to inspectors independent of electoral 
considerations, but nothing has been done, although 
the proportion of illiterates in France is disgrace- 
fully high.^ 

To sum up, the French administration is a cen- 
tralised bureaucracy which spreads its tentacles 
over the whole country and controls the life of the 
people through its agents, discouraging individual 
initiative and enforcing an arid uniformity without 
regard for regional differences. It has many arbi- 
trary powers and closely resembles Russian admin- 
istration under the Tsars. It is hierarchical in its 
organisation, each member of it having an exactly 
defined position in regard to his superiors and his 
subordinates. Its methods are unintelligent and 
often vexatious, and it is swathed in red tape. The 
^\^ / officials regard themselves, not as the servants, but 
'' as the masters of the public, and act accordingly. 
Nobody can go into a Parisian post-office without 
being made to feel that, and the post-office officials 
are modest and obliging in comparison with the 
officials of a Government department. Here are a 
few examples of what the French themselves so ap- 
propriately call the " chinoiserie " of the adminis- 
tration. A few years ago I wrote to the Prefecture 
of the Seine claiming a small reduction in taxes to 
which I was entitled owing to the fact that I had 
children under sixteen. Months went by without 
any acknowledgment of the letter, and I had 

^ According to a statement made at the national congress of 
the General Confederation of Labour at Lyons on September 16, 
1919, advdt illiterates are 6 per cent, of the population. 



THE ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM 83 

forgotten all about the matter when, more than a 
year after my application, I at last received a reply 
informing me that my application ought to have 
been made on stamped paper and that I could 
appeal to the Conseil d'Etat.^ On another occasion 
I telegraphed a certain sum of money from London 
to a member of my family in Paris, who duly pre- 
sented the telegraphic money order at the post office 
indicated therein. As she could not produce papers 
of identification satisfactory to the gentleman with 
whom she dealt, he told her that she must bring two 
witnesses to prove her identity. She returned to 
the post office, bringing with her the concierge of 
the house in which we lived and a friend who occu- 
pied another fiat in the same house. Their papers, 
too, were considered insufficient and they were told 
that each of them must bring two more witnesses. 
At that point the holder of the money order gave 
up the enterprise in despair and borrowed the 
money from a friend of mine. If she had known it, 
she had only, when the telegram was delivered, to 
write on it a request for payment " a domicile " 
and return it to the messenger, and the money would 
have been brought to her from the post office. 
The post office official with whom she had to do was, 
of course, well aware of that fact and deliberately 
abstained from giving her the information. What 
else would one expect ? He was there to " embeter 
le public." One more example will suffice. A 
person desiring to change a number of sheets of 
stamped paper for sheets of a different individual 

^ The Conseil d'Etat is a supreme Coiirt with both executive 
and judicial functions. It is the final Court of Appeal for all 
cases coining within the scope of the droit administratif. It 
has not the power of the American Supreme Court to decide 
whether a law is constitutional. The French Parliament is 
supreme : laws passed by it cannot be revised, and there is no 
means of bringing it to book if it acts unconstitutionally. 

G 2 



84 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

value presented himself at the central office for the 
sale of stamped paper. There he was told that if 
the sheets had been soiled so as to be unusable they 
could have been exchanged, but as they were per- 
fectly clean it was impossible to take them back. 
He promptly soiled them with his boots and the 
exchange was effected. I mentioned this pleasing 
incident to a high official of the French administra- 
tion, who admitted that the regulation in question 
seemed hardly reasonable or profitable to the State, 
but said that there might be some reason for it 
hidden from ordinary intelligences, and that in any 
case the duty of the official was to follow the regu- 
lation blindly. I ventured tentatively to suggest 
that in a Government department, as in a private 
business concern, some room might be left for the 
exercise of individual discretion. He was horrified 
at the idea. If, he said, any sort of individual ini- 
tiative or discretion were left to Government offi- 
cials, the whole fabric of the State would crumble 
to pieces. I remained unconvinced. 

These are but typical examples of the methods of 
an administration which seems to have been 
modelled on that of ancient China, and which is 
founded on the principle that the individual was 
made for the State and not the State for the indi- 
vidual. At the head of this great bureaucratic 
machine are the Ministers, all-powerful dispensers 
of places, decorations, tobacco agencies and other 
favours, which they shower on a grateful country 
through the intermediary of Senators, Deputies 
and Prefects. And behind the Ministers are the 
real rulers of France — those who pull the strings — 
the Bank of France, the Credit Foncier, the railway 
companies, the great financial and industrial in- 
terests. Anatole France once asked a Minister why 
all French Governments were equally impotent in 



THE ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM 85 

the matter of social reform. " What do you expect 
us to do ? " was the reply ; " the Minister of Finance 
is at the Credit Lyonnais, the Minister of Marine at 
Creusot, the Minister of War on the Commissions, 
and so on." The reply may not have been literally 
true, but it was at least a symbolical representation 
of the truth; it is this highly centralised undemo- 
cratic system of administration that enables a hand- 
ful of capitalists and financiers to keep so firm a 
grip on France. The more centralised the power is 
in any country, the fewer the hands in which it is 
concentrated, the easier it is to capture it. The 
excessive powers of the Central Executive in France 
make its capture by hidden influences easier than 
in many other countries. The evil has been aggra- 
vated by the abuse of the doctrine of the separation 
of the legislative and executive powers, which is 
interpreted as meaning that the legislature, 
although it has the right to dismiss a Government 
of whose policy it disapproves, has no right to inter- 
fere in the details of administration, with the result 
that the Executive is subject to no effective control 
and becomes almost omnipotent. In France the 
raison d'etat is supreme ; the individual has hardly 
any rights against the State. 

One has only to look back at the history of 
France in the nineteenth century to see that the 
centralised administration has been the most power- 
ful instrument of conservatism and reaction, the 
greatest obstacle to the triumph of democracy. It 
was the centralised administrative system that 
enabled the Royalists under Louis XVIII and 
Charles X to establish the White Terror, to restore 
the ancien regime, and to keep France under their 
Heel for fifteen years, until the only remedy for 
oppression was insurrection. When at last the 
Parisian democracy revolted in 1830, the bour- 



86 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

geoisie, thanks to the defection of Lafayette, pre- 
vented the creation of a RepubHc, which would 
almost certainly have proved a stable and lasting 
form of government; and it was the centralised 
administration that enabled the bourgeoisie to 
retain the mastery of the country during the eigh- 
teen years of the Monarchy of July. It was again 
the centralised administration that made it possible 
for Napoleon III to be Dictator of France for 
twenty-two years with the aid of the Church ; " to 
secure himself against the claims of liberty," said 
the Catholic Montalembert, " he needed the support 
of both the guard-room and the sacristy." And it 
has been the centralised administration that has 
preserved the domination of the bourgeoisie — of the 
financial and industrial magnates — under the Third 
Republic, and has neutralised the democratic ele- 
ments in the French Constitution. A dictator or a 
bureaucracy armed with such an instrument as the 
French administrative system can secure the abso- 
lute mastery of the country and reduce opposition 
to impotence unless and until it becomes revolt. 
That is why France had three revolutions in the 
nineteenth century and is likely to have a fourth 
in the twentieth. "France," said the Constitu- 
tional Monarchist Royer-Collard nearly a century 
ago, " is a bureau-governed nation in the hands of 
irresponsible officials directed by the hand of a 
central power whose instruments they are. . . w 
Centralisation has made us a nation of slaves to an 
irresponsible bureaucracy which is itself centralised 
in the hands of the Government of which it is the 
instrument." That is as true in 1919 as it was in 
1823. 

No department of the French administration is 
so anti-democratic as the Secret Police, which is 
under the control of the Ministry of the Interior; 



THE ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM 87 

its methods resemble those of the Russian Secret 
Police under the Tsardom, and it exists more for 
political purposes than for the prevention and detec- 
tion of crime. If the proportion of undetected 
crimes in France is abnormally high, it is because 
the detective service is so much occupied in track- 
ing the political opponents of the Government of 
the day that it has little leisure for tracking crimi- 
nals. Its spies are everywhere : every political and 
labour organisation is full of them, especially 
such as have or are supposed to have a revolu- 
tionary tendency. The imagination reels at the 
thought of the vast quantities of paper and ink that 
must be wasted on reports of the meetings of a 
Socialist section or a Trade Union branch. The 
unfortunate officials that have to read such reports 
are much to be pitied, for, as may be imagined, 
the information given in them is usually far from 
accurate. The police spy invariably betrays both 
his employers and the organisation on which he 
spies, and as his pay depends on the information 
that he supplies, when interesting information is 
lacking he has to invent it. The system produces 
an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion, and leads 
to constant accusations of spying by members of 
political and labour organisations against one 
another. It also leads to grave abuses and injus- 
tices : a police agent can always either denounce as 
a spy to his comrades an individual against whom 
he has a personal grudge, or else send false reports 
about his words or actions to the police authorities ; 
he rarely fails to use the opportunity. What is worst 
of all is that the spy easily becames an agent provo- 
cateur, for the French Political Police unhappily 
resorts to the detestable method of manufacturing 
crime in order to have the credit of repressing it. 
One of the worst examples of this system was the 



88 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

famous case of Metivier, at the time of the great 
strikes in 1908 which culminated in the massacres of 
the strikers by the military at Villeneuve-St. Georges 
and Draveil. Metivier, who was a Trade Union 
secretary, was one of the chief instigators of the 
strikers to acts of violence. He was arrested, and 
there was an interpellation on his arrest in the 
Chamber of Deputies. M. Clemenceau, who was at 
the time Prime Minister and Minister of the In- 
terior, in his reply to the interpellators, justified the 
arrest on the ground that Metivier had been the 
chief author of the troubles, denounced him in 
vigorous language and indignantly denied that the 
arrest of such a man could be regarded as an affront 
to the working classes. Two years later it was dis- 
covered that Metivier was an agent provocateur 
employed by the police at a regular salary with the 
knowledge and approval of M. Clemenceau himself, 
and that he had been paid double salary while 
serving the terms of imprisonment necessary to 
prevent any suspicion on the part of the workmen 
of his real character. The whole of the facts were 
published in the Press and M. Clemenceau could 
not deny them. This is, unfortunately, merely a 
typical example of an habitual practice which had 
gone on long before that time and which still con- 
tinues. It was remarkable only from the fact that 
for once it was possible to prove the direct responsi- 
bility of the Minister of the Interior. But the 
Minister of the Interior is alwaj^^s either directly 
or indirectly responsible, for he could stop the em- 
ployment of agents provocateurs by a stroke of the 
pen. Not one Minister of the Interior in the his- 
tory of the Third Republic has done so. 

An exhaustive account of the methods and prac- 
tices of the Political Police would fill a whole 
volume, and only a few more examples of them can 



THE ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM 89 

be mentioned. Everybody of any importance, par- 
ticularly of any political importance, has his dossier 
at the Ministry of the Interior, in which anything 
supposed to be to his discredit is noted. The 
dossiers are compiled from any sort of gossip or 
tittle-tattle that can be collected from anybody, 
and no attempt is made to verify the information 
or to test the credibility of the informants, who are 
for the most part police spies — the most untrust- 
worthy of all witnesses. In Paris some of the in- 
formation is obtained from the concierges, many of 
whom are in touch with the police and are employed 
to spy on the tenants of the houses where they are 
employed, and even sometimes to intercept their 
correspondence. Rightly or wrongly, the concierge 
is popularly regarded as a person addicted to gossip 
and given to extreme credulity ; one can hardly say 
anything worse of a man than that he has "un 
mentalite de concierge." In any case, it is so gene- 
rally recognised that the information obtained by 
the police about individuals is not worth serious 
consideration that "rapport de police " is a slang 
expression for any kind of obviously untrue report 
about a person. Indeed, one of the worst effects of 
the French police system is that it utterly discredits 
the police, in whom the public has as little con- 
fidence as it has in the administration of justice, for 
reasons which we shall consider later. The police 
are intensely unpopular in France, even with honest 
people, and in many cases people will suffer an in- 
justice or a wrong rather than resort to them, such 
is the suspicion with which they are regarded. A 
French crowd is rarely willing to give assistance 
even to an ordinary policeman in the exercise of 
his duty. Indeed, the French people as a whole 
regard the police as their enemies. This is the 
nemesis of an arbitrary system which takes no 



90 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

account of justice and has no regard for individual 
rights.^ 

It may perhaps be useful to mention two ex- 
amples of the untrustworthiness of police dossiers 
within my own knowledge : I could mention several 
others. A friend of mine on becoming a Minister 
for the first time was asked by the Minister of the 
Interior whether he would like to see his dossier. 
He said that he would, and it was shown to him. 
Therein he read that he was in close relations with 
a certain trade union leader of revolutionary 
opinions, whom he was in the habit of meeting two 
or three times a week. Now the Minister in ques- 
tion, as he told me, had some acquaintances among 
the trade union leaders, but the particular one men- 
tioned he had never spoken to in his life and did not 
even know by sight. The other example concerns 
myself. It was, and probably still is, recorded in 
my dossier that in 1911 I was in close relations with 
Mannesmann Brothers, the German firm in Morocco 
which had difficulties with the French Government. 
In fact, I have never in my life had the smallest 
connection of any kind with the firm in question, 
which I know only by name, like everyone else. I 
have since discovered the possible explanation of 
this fiction : a paper with which I was connected 
received in 1911 occasional contributions from an 
Englishman in Morocco, whose name bore no resem- 
blance to mine, but who may, for all I know, have 
had business or other relations with Mannesmann 
Brothers. Perhaps I may add another personal 

1 The methods of what Georges Courteline has called *' cea 
deux vieilles ermemies achame^a des gens de bien : I'administra- 
tion et la loi " have often provoked the irony of French authors, 
and French literature is full of stories exposing their injustice. 
The masterpiece of this kind is Anatole France's " Crainquebille"; 
a lighter example is Courteline's short story, " TJn Monsieur a 
trQUv6 une moiitre," in which occurs the phrase just quoted. 



THE ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM 91 

experience which, although it does not relate to 
the matter of dossiers, is an amusing example of 
the senseless way in which the French police wastes 
its time. In 1912 a committee was formed in Paris 
to take up the case of a soldier called Rousset, who 
had been convicted of murder in Africa in circum- 
stances which unpleasantly recalled the Dreyfus 
case, although in the case of Rousset the motive 
was personal, not political, rancour. The com- 
mittee succeeded in proving conclusively that 
Rousset was innocent and the conviction was ulti- 
mately quashed. The president of the committee 
was M. Anatole France, and it was composed of 
men of the highest reputation in politics, literature, 
religion and other callings, with very different 
opinions on all matters. Being a foreigner, I did 
not, of course, join the committee, but I was asked 
to allow it to meet at my flat, which happened to be 
in a central situation convenient for all the mem- 
bers. I did so, and the meetings were held from 
time to time at about 8.30 p.m., and lasted perhaps 
until about 10 o'clock. Immediately after the first 
meeting the concierge of the house in which I lived 
was visited by the police, who put him through a 
severe cross-examination and requested him to 
supply them with information about all the people 
that came to my flat and anything else that he 
could discover. Detectives were told off to watch 
the house day and night, and the unfortunate con- 
cierge's life was made a burden to him by the fre- 
quent visits of the police. Finally, I received a 
letter from my landlord saying that he had been 
informed by the police that I was holding in my 
flat " conciliabules nocturnes " of dangerous and 
revolutionary persons, who remained there until the 
small hours of the morning, and requesting me to 
desist from such practices. Instead of desisting, I 



92 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

at once had the matter reported to M. Steeg, who 
was then Minister of the Interior, and he ordered 
the poUce to desist from their kind attentions. Let 
it not be thought that I was the object of those 
attentions merely because I was a foreigner; this 
is the sort of thing to which any French citizen may 
be and often is subjected. A Frenchman's house 
is not his castle so far as the State and the police 
are concerned. The police have the power to make 
domiciliary visits on the slightest excuse to the 
homes of persons not charged with any offence 
against the law and to overhaul all their private 
papers. Even correspondence is not sacred, for the 
Cabinet Noir is a permanent institution, and letters 
are frequently intercepted in the post and opened 
secretly. All these methods have, of course, been 
aggravated during the war by martial law, but it 
is not my intention here to speak of what happened 
during the war ; the system that I have described is 
the normal one which functions in time of peace. 
It is condemned by the vast majority of the French 
people, but it does not seem to occur to them that 
they could change it if they would only take the 
trouble. In France more than anywhere, every- 
body's business is nobody's business. 

Not only has the French police imitated the 
methods of the Russian, but it has also, since the 
Russian Alliance, which had as disastrous an in- 
fluence on the internal affairs as on the foreign 
policy of France, closely co-operated with the 
Russian Secret Police. There have been times 
when the Russian Secret Police was given a free 
hand in France in regard to Russian subjects, even 
if they happened to be Poles or Finns. When M. 
Ribot was Prime Minister in the 'nineties, in the 
early days of the Alliance, Parisian concierges were 
used by the Russian police, with the consent of the 



THE ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM 98 

French authorities, to intercept correspondence of 
tenants. Large numbers of Russian and Pohsh 
refugees, who had fled from the tyranny of the 
Tsardom to the country of the Revolution, have 
been expelled from France for no reason at all ex- 
cept that the Russian Embassy or the Russian 
Secret Police desired their expulsion.^ One of these 
expulsions — that of Trotsky — has cost France dear. 
When Trotsky was expelled in August 1916, at the 
request of M. Isvolsky, the Russian Ambassador, 
he said to the agents who came to conduct him to 
the frontier : " Tell your Minister of Foreign Affairs 
that the time is not far distant when I will meet 
him as an equal." He has kept his word, and it 
was no doubt in order that he might keep it that 
he became Commissioner for Foreign Affairs in the 
first Bolshevik Administration. There can also be 
no doubt that Trotsky's natural though not very 
generous personal rancour for the treatment that he 
had received had a considerable influence on his 
policy, which might otherwise not have been anti- 
French. It must be said as some excuse for his 
bitterness that the French police pursued him after 
his expulsion with vindictive malice, and that he 
and his family were for a time almost reduced to 
starvation. Trotsky, who had been earning a bare 
subsistence by the publication of a Russian paper 
in France, was penniless at the time of his expul- 
sion. He first went to Switzerland, but was ex- 
pelled from that country at the instigation of the 
French Government ; he then took refuge in Spain, 
where the representations of the French police 
caused him to be arrested and imprisoned; the 
Spanish Socialists obtained his release, and he went 

^ The Minister of the Interior has absolute power to expel 
any foreigner from France at any time without giving any 
reason. 



94 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

to the United States, where he remained until the 
Russian Revolution. It was a certain poetic justice 
that enabled this man within little more than a year 
of his expulsion to speak in the name of Russia to 
the Government that had tracked and persecuted 
him. 

Enough has been said to show that nothing could 
be less democratic than the French administration. 
The political Constitution and the legislature seem 
at first sight more democratic, and in some respects 
they are, but they are very far from realising the 
conditions of true democracy. This is not surpris- 
ing, since the French Constitution was the work of 
Monarchists who did not want a Republic and 
whose intention it was to frame a Constitution 
which could easily be adapted to a monarchical 
regime. Indeed, the French Constitution could be 
so adapted by the mere transference to the 
Monarch of the rights and powers of the President 
of the Republic, which are considerably greater 
than those of the King of England. The Royalists 
had a large majority in the National Assembly 
elected in 1871, which, in spite of the opposition of 
Gambetta and the Republicans, made peace with 
Germany and consented to the cession of Alsace- 
Lorraine. No other course was possible in the cir- 
cumstances, and it would have been madness to 
continue a hopeless struggle; Gambetta had with 
the best intentions done great harm to his country 
by continuing it so long, for France was offered, 
after the battle of Sedan and the fall of the Second 
Empire, better terms of peace than she afterwards 
obtained. It was because the peasants, with their 
usual good sense, recognised that fact that they 
returned a Royalist majority to the National Assem- 
bly. The National Assembly, then, had no inten- 
tion of setting up a Republic; but for the 



THE l^OLITICAL SYSTJEM 93 

obstinate refusal of the Comte de Chambord to 
abandon the Lilies of France for the Tricolour, that 
pious and stupid prince would certainly have be- 
come King of France, although he probably would 
not have remained long on the throne. When cir- 
cumstances made a Republic inevitable, the 
National Assembly acquiesced with great reluc- 
tance ; it was by a majority of one that it consented 
to confer on Thiers the title of " Chief of the Execu- 
tive of the French Republic," In spite of this 
reluctant acquiescence, the majority of the Assem- 
bly still hoped to restore the Monarchy sooner or 
later, and, when the Constitution was framed in 
1875, it was, as I have said, framed in that hope 
and with the express purpose of making a restora- 
tion easy. Hence it is that France has still a 
Royalist Constitution, for the amendments made in 
it since have not destroyed its essential monarchist 
character. 

The French Constitution was modelled as far as 
possible on the British, and differs profoundly from 
the Constitution of the United States of America. 
The American President is his own Prime Minister ; 
he forms the Cabinet as he pleases, and the Execu- 
tive is not responsible to Congress, which cannot 
dismiss it; the Cabinet remains in office, even 
though there be a majority against it in both 
Houses. The American system of government, in 
fact, is not parliamentary government at all, since 
Parliament has no effective control over the Execu- 
tive except in certain specified regards — for ex- 
ample, a treaty requires the ratification of the 
Senate. It is really an elective autocracy lasting 
in each case for four years and is very far from 
being democratic, for democracy in the true sense 
of the term implies the constant control of the 
Executive; that control may be exercised in 



96 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

different ways, but it must exist. In America it 
does not exist : the President of the United States 
has more personal power than the German Emperor 
ever had and is now the only autocrat left in the 
civilised world. The President of the French Re- 
public, on the other hand, is a constitutional 
monarch elected for seven years. The Constitution 
gives him the right to appoint the Ministers, but in 
fact he appoints only the Prime Minister, who 
chooses his own colleagues. No doubt the Presi- 
dent may, and sometimes does, object to a particu- 
lar choice, but if the Prime Minister stands firm he 
is almost sure to have his own way. For the Con- 
stitution implies that a Ministry must have a majo- 
rity in Parliament and must resign if it has not; 
and if the Prime Minister be really the choice of 
Parliament he can always successfully resist the 
President of the Republic. Only one President in 
the history of the Third Republic — ^Marshal 
MacMahon — has attempted to overrule Parliament 
by forcing on it a Prime Minister that it did not 
want ; the country condemned the attempt at a 
general election, and Marshal MacMahon himself 
eventually had to resign. When in May 1914 M. 
Poincare entrusted M. Ribot with the formation of 
a Cabinet, although he was obviously not accept- 
able to the majority of the Chamber, the new Minis- 
try was defeated in the Chamber on its first appear- 
ance before it, and of course at once resigned. The 
French system of government is therefore a true 
parliamentary system like the British, which is not 
to say that it is really democratic. 

The Constitution confers important powers on 
the President of the Republic, but they are not 
quite personal like those of the President of the 
United States, for no act of the French President 
is valid unless it is countersigned by a Minister. 



THE POLITICAL SYSTEM 97 

Nevertheless, these powers are excessive and one 
of them in particular is extremely dangerous. 
The President of the Republic has the disposal 
of the French military and naval forces and 
has the power to sign treaties, which he is not 
bound to make known to Parliament until he thinks 
it opportune to do so. It is this last power that is 
so dangerous. In order to be valid and binding on 
the French people, treaties, with certain exceptions, 
have only to be signed by the President of the 
Republic and a single Minister.^ The President 
and the Prime Minister or the Minister of Foreign 
Affairs can therefore make a secret treaty, 
not merely without consulting Parliament, but 
even without consulting the Cabinet ; two 
men have the power to commit the French 
people without their knowledge or consent to 
obligations which may involve the risk of their 
lives and property and the gravest danger to the 
country. Nor is this merely an hypothesis ; it has 
often occurred. M. Poincare and M. Briand made 
the Agreement of February 1917 with the Russian 
Government without consulting the Cabinet. M. 
Albert Thomas, who was a member of M. Briand 's 
Cabinet, knew nothing about the Agreement until 
the following June, when, on his return from 
Russia, he was informed of it by M. Ribot, who had 
then succeeded M. Briand as Prime Minister. But 
the worst example of ail is that of the Franco- 
Russian Alliance. The fact of the Alliance was 
formally proclaimed in 1897 and it had been con- 
cluded five or six years earlier. Yet in 1914, when 
the Alliance, as Jaures had foreseen more than 

^ The exceptions are peace treaties, commercial treaties, and 
treaties that involve public expenditiire or are concerned with 
the status or property of French citizens abroad, all of which 
have to be ratified by Parliament. No territory can be ceded, 
annexed, or exchanged witi-out the sanction of a special law. 

H 



98 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

a quarter of a century before, dragged France 
into war,^ the French people, and even pro- 
minent French pohticians, were still totally 
ignorant of its conditions and of the provi- 
sions of the treaties which constituted it. They did 
not know what were the obligations to which they 
had been committed — whether, for instance, France 
was compelled by the treaties to go to the aid of 
Russia if the latter were attacked by Germany 
alone, or only if she were attacked by two Powers. 
Supposing that the latter hypothesis were the true 
one, France could have undertaken to remain 
neutral when Germany asked her to do so after the 
German declaration of war on Russia on 
August 1, 1914. Whether it would or would 
not have been wise for France to remain 
neutral is a question into which I do not 
now propose to enter; in any case, the French 
people, and the French people alone, had the right 
to make the choice and should have been given 
the opportunity of making it. The French people 
had, in fact, no voice in the matter, and could not, 
even had it been consulted, have made a choice 
without knowing what its obligations to Russia 
were. The provisions of the French Constitution in 
this regard are the negation of democracy, for they 
deprive the people, its representatives, and even 
the Cabinet, of any effective control over foreign 
policy. In this regard the French Republic is not 
one whit more democratic than was the German 
Empire. 

^ In an article contributed to the Depdche de Toulouse on 
February 26, 1887, Jaures, who at that time was not yet a 
Socialist, strongly opposed the Russian Alliance, which was then 
being discussed, on the ground that the next great war would 
be caused by a quarrel between Austria and Rxissia about the 
Balkans, and that an alliance with Russia wovild drag France 
into it. (See preface of " Jean Jaurfes," by Charles Rappoport, 
2nd edition.) 



THE POLITICAL SYSTEM 99 

The Constitution forbids a declaration of war 
without the consent of ParUament, but this pro- 
vision is of httle practical use, for a Government 
can always take the preliminary steps for war and 
put Parliament in face of a fait accompli. The 
case did not arise in August 1914, since Germany 
declared war on France ; but the Government took 
care not to summon Parliament, which was in vaca- 
tion at the time, until war had been declared. In a 
really democratic country Parliament would be 
summoned the moment there seemed to be any 
danger of war and would be consulted about every 
step in the negotiations. Had all the negotiations 
that preceded the war been conducted publicly in 
the face of the world, it is probable that there 
would have been no war, for all the peoples would 
then have understood what their diplomatists were 
up to. In defiance of the Constitution, the French 
Government declared war on Austria and on Turkey 
without consulting Parliament, which has com- 
pletely acquiesced in the infringement of its rights, 
and those of the French people; the question has 
never been raised in the Senate or Chamber. Since 
the Armistice the French Government has uncon- 
stitutionally conducted military operations against 
the Russian Soviet Government without declaring 
war. 

The French Legislature consists of two Houses, 
the Chamber of Deputies, elected by manhood 
suffrage, and the Senate, chosen by an electorate 
composed of the Deputies, the members of the 
conseils-generauoo and conseils d'arrondissement, 
and delegates from the Municipal Councils.^ 

^ For a senatorial election the electoral college assembles at the 
chief town of the department. The first poll is taken from 
8 a.m. to noon ; if no candidate obtains a clear majority of all 
the votes cast, another poll is taken from 2 to 5 p.m., and if 
that also is without result, there is a third from 7 to 10 p.m., 

H 2 



100 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

There are 300 senators ; 100 are elected every three 
years and hold office for nine years; nobody is 
eligible for election to the Senate until he is at least 
forty years old. By the original Constitution 
seventy-five Senators were elected for life by the 
Senate itself (in the first instance by the National 
Assembly), but this was altered in 1887. The 
number of Senators for each department is not pro- 
portionate to its population, and the municipal 
councils of the large towns are very much under- 
represented in the electoral colleges.^ The result 

at which the candidate obtaining the highest number of votes is 
elected. But no candidate can be elected unless he obtains the 
votes of at least one-fourth of the electors on the register. In 
case of equality of votes between two candidates, the elder is 
elected. Even if there be only one candidate at an election, a 
poll must be taken and at least one-fourth of the electors must 
record their votes for the candidate in order to secure his election. 
The ballot at senatorial elections, as at all French elections, 
is secret ; the safeguards of secrecy are now very rigorous and 
effective. 

^ Seven colonial departments and the Territory of Belf ort have 
one senator each, ten departments have two each, fifty-two three, 
twelve four, and ten five each ; the Nord has eight senators and 
the Seine ten. The population of the Seine (1911) is 4,154,042. 
rather more than one-tenth of the whole population of France, so 
that the department should have at least thirty senators ; in 
fact it has half the representation of the ten departments with 
two senators each, whose aggregate popiilation is only 1,953,760. 
The Paris municipal council has thirty delegates at a Senatorial 
election, the councils of other towns with more than 60,000 in- 
habitants have twenty-four, and the number varies from one 
to twenty -one in the other cases ; the councils of eommmies with 
less than 500 inliabitants have one delegate, those of communes 
with more than 500 but not more than 1,500 inhabitants have 
two, and so on. In 1911 more than half the communes of 
France (19,270 out of 36,241) had less than 500 inhabitants ; these 
conmaunes, with an aggregate poptilation of about five millions, 
have 19,270 votes for the Senate, whereas Paris, with a popula- 
tion of nearly three milMons, has only thirty. A concrete example 
of the working of the system in a department will show its 
injustice. The department of the Rhone has twenty-nine 
cantons, of which eight are in Lyons, and 269 communes. The 
mtmicipal council of Lyons, which has a popTilation of 523,796, 
has twenty-four delegates at a senatorial election ; the couacils 



THE POLITICAL SYSTEM 101 

is that the rural districts enormously preponderate 
in the election of the Senate, which is always a 
conservative body, especially in regard to social 
and labour questions ; it is also always anti-clerical 
and the majority of its members are always Radi- 
cals. But as Sir Charles Dilke said to M. Emile 
Vandervelde, speaking of an English Tory politi- 
cian who was particularly hostile to all reform, 
" He is as conservative as a French Radical." At 
the general election of 1914, 101 Socialists were 
elected to the Chamber of Deputies, but there is 
not and there has never been a single Socialist in 
the Senate ; that fact alone shows that the Senate 
does not represent the country. 

The Chamber of Deputies is elected every four 
years. Until 1919 the system was that of single- 
member constituencies (scrutin d'arrondissement), 
except for a short interval during which there was 
scrutin de liste — that is to say, the constituency 
was the department, and the elector had as many 
votes as there were deputies to be elected, but 
could not give more than one vote to any candidate. 
The latter system, which meant that a party having 
a bare majority could elect all the deputies of a 
department, was in force at only one general elec- 
tion- — that of 1886 — and its results were so unsatis- 
factory that in 1889 the scrutin d^arrondissement 
was restored. The scrutin de liste might, indeed, 
easily produce a Parliament in which the majority 
represented a minority of the voters. In July 
1919, however, the scrutin de liste was again 

of the other 268 communes, whose aggregate population is 
391,785, have 674 delegates. Since every canton, whatever its 
population, has one representative on the conseil-general, Lyons 
returns only eight of the twenty-nine members of the conseil- 
general of the Rhone (all of whom have votes for the Senate), 
and is also swamped there. It will be seen that the system on 
which the Senate is elected is a caricature of representation. 



102 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

introduced, but this time with a modification which 
reduced its dangers, although the hybrid system 
adopted— a mixture of scrutin de liste and propor- 
tional representation — is not likely to prove very 
satisfactory, and will probably result in a repre- 
sentation less proportional than that obtained by 
the old system of single-member constituencies 
with a second ballot. Indeed at the general elec- 
tion of 1914 the Socialists had exactly the number 
of Deputies to which their total poll at the first 
ballot would have entitled them on an absolutely 
exact proportional system, such as is, of course, 
impossible in practice, and the representation of the 
other parties was fairly proportioiial to their respec- 
tive voting strengths. The system adopted in July 
1919, was a compromise between the Proportional- 
ists and the advocates of single-member constitu- 
encies, who, when they recognised that the old 
system was doomed, preferred the scrutin de liste 
pure and simple to any proportional system, on 
the absurd ground that the "^representation of 
minorities " is undemocratic. They seemed to 
forget that with any system minorities are repre- 
sented in the country as a whole, as they ought to 
be, and that the so-called ''majoritaire " system 
of scrutin de liste might well result in giving over- 
representation to minorities. 

The new system is as illogical as such compro- 
mises always are and may result in unpleasant sur- 
prises. The department once more becomes the 
constituency, as a rule, but the Seine is divided into 
four constituencies (three in Paris and one com- 
posed of its suburbs), and seven other depart- 
ments into two. Each department is eventually 
to have one deputy for every 75,000 inhabit- 
ants of French nationality or fraction of 75,000 
exceeding 37,500. If this provision were strictly 



THE POLITICAL SYSTEM 103 

applied, a department would not be entitled 
to two Deputies unless it had more than 
112,500 French inhabitants, and would have 
three Deputies only if its French population ex- 
ceeded 187,500; but either scrutin de liste or pro- 
portional representation necessitates at least three 
Deputies for every constituency. The proper solu- 
tion would have been to group small departments, 
as was indeed proposed during the discussion of the 
law ; but it was decided that no department, what- 
ever its population, should have less than three 
Deputies. The over-representation of the rural 
districts, which was one of the greatest faults of 
the old system, will therefore be continued, but 
only to a small extent.^ The law further provided 
that all the departments should retain their old 
representation until a new census had been taken, 
with the result that there will be considerable in- 
equalities in the representation of the departments 
at the general election of 1919.^ Each elector has 

^ In 1911 there were only two departments with a population 
not exceeding 112,500 and two with a population exceeding that 
figure but not exceeding 187,500, so that there will be only 
four departments over-represented when the new law is fully 
applied, unless, as is possible, the next census should show that 
the number of departments with not more than 187,500 in- 
habitants has increased. 

* At present every department has at least one deputy for 
each of its arrondissenients, however small their population may 
be. For example, Basses-Alpes, with a population of 107,231, 
and Hautes-Alpes, with a population of 105,083, have respec- 
tively five and three deputies. Aube, whose population is 
240,755, has six deputies, because one of its five arrondissenients 
having more than 100,000 inhabitants is entitled to two, although 
each of the other four arrondissenients has a population of less 
than 40,000, and one of them has only 26,684 inhabitants. Under 
the new law Aube will eventually be entitled to only three 
depiaties, unless its population should have increased, as is im- 
probable. These are but examples of the general over-repre- 
sentation of the rural departments, which the new law will correct 
to a very great extent. The seventeen departments with a 



104 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

as many votes as there are Deputies to be elected, 
but can give only one vote to each candidate. The 
candidates are presented in lists, which may include 
as many names as there are Deputies to be elected 
or any smaller number down to one. The elector 
can either vote for a list as a whole or make a list 
of his own selection from the various candidates 
nominated. Any candidate that obtains at the 
poll a clear majority of all the voters is declared 
elected ; if, therefore, the whole list of a particular 
party is supported by more than half the voters, 
that party returns the whole of the Deputies for 
the constituency — the Nord, which is undivided, 
has twenty-three. If no candidate obtains a 
clear majority, or if the number of candidates 
that obtain it is less than the number of 
Deputies to be elected, the seats, or the remnant 
of them, are distributed among the various lists on 
the Belgian system of proportional representation. 
The " electoral quotient " is obtained by dividing 
the total number of voters by the number of Depu- 
ties to be elected, and the average of each list is 
arrived at by dividing the aggregate number of 
votes obtained by the list by the number of candi- 
dates on it. The number of seats allotted to each 
list is the number of times that its average contains 
the electoral quotient. If there still remain seats 
to be filled, they are allotted to the lists having 
the largest average.^ On each list the seats are 

population not exceeding 262,500, which will under the new law 
be entitled to only three deputies each, have at present an 
aggregate of sixty-seven deputies. 

^ For example, take a constitxiency with five deputies to elect, 
60,000 voters and three lists, whose respective aggregate polls 
are 148,000, 80,000, and 72,000. One of the candidates on List 
A obtains 33,000 votes and is, therefore, elected ; no other can- 
didate has more than 30,000 votes. There remain four seats to 
be filled. The electoral quotient is 12,000, and the averages 
are : List A, 29,600 ; List B, 16,000 ; List C, 14,400. Two of 



THE POLITICAL SYSTEM 105 

allotted to the candidates obtaining the largest 
number of votes or, in case of equality, to 
the oldest of them. Unless more than half the 
electors go to the poll, or if no list has enough 
votes to contain the electoral quotient, the election 
is invalid, and another poll is held a fortnight later, 
when, if the same circumstances occur, the candi- 
dates obtaining the largest number of votes are 
elected. Vacancies occurring during the first three 
and a half years of a Parliament are filled by bye- 
elections ; during the last six months of a Parlia- 
ment vacancies are not filled at all. 

So far as the Chamber of Deputies is concerned 
the French legislative system is, therefore, as demo- 
cratic as any other parliamentary system, but the 
Constitution takes away with one hand what it has 
given with the other. The Chamber elected by 
popular suffrage and the Senate elected by re- 
stricted suffrage have, with one exception, the same 
rights and powers ; the Senate is more than a Second 
Chamber, it is a co-ordinate Chamber.^ The one 

the remaining seats will be allotted to List A, which will have 
altogether three deputies, and each of the other lists will have 
one deputy. This result is the same as it would be with a 
system of purely proportional representation and is sufficiently 
just. But supposing that two candidates on List A obtained 
respectively 32,000 and 31,000 votes, they would both be elected 
at once, and there would remain only three seats to be filled. 
On the proportional system List A would be entitled to two more 
seats, and the other two lists to one each, so that there would 
not be enough seats to go round. In these circumstances the 
law provides that the seats shall be attributed to the candidates 
on whatever list having the largest number of votes. If, as is 
probable, all the candidates on List A had more votes than 
any candidate on either of the other lists, List A would be 
allotted all the three seats, and would have all the five depvities 
although it had not a clear majority of the votes. It will be seen 
that the system leaves much to chance. 

^ The Senate has also judicial functions. It sits as a High 
Court to try the President of the Republic or Ministers for 
" crimes committed in the exercise of their functions," and as 



106 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

exception is that the Senate cannot initiate financial 
legislation, a term which includes any measure 
involving special expenditure, but the Senate can 
reject the Budget and amend it as it pleases. Such 
a system must inevitably be unworkable and ex- 
perience has shown it to be so. There is no means 
of settling a difference between the two Houses 
except that of a joint committee, which can only 
make recommendations and usually results in an 
unsatisfactory compromise. The Senate can and 
does obstruct for an indefinite period measures that 
have been passed by the Chamber ; it does not, as 
a rule, reject them, but simply hangs them up for 
years. That is easy, since in the French Parlia- 
ment a Bill does not lapse at the end of a session if 
it has not been passed, or even at the end of a Par- 
liament ; it is taken up in each new session or new 
Parliament at the point where it was left by the 
last. The Income Tax Bill was passed by the 
Chamber in 1909 and did not get through the 
Senate until 1914 ; it should have come into force in 
January 1915, but its operation was postponed 
on account of the war, and it was not completely 
applied until 1918, and then in a diluted form. 
The shocking backwardness of France in regard to 
all social legislation is undoubtedly due chiefly to 

a Court of Justice to try any person accused of an " attempt 
against the security of the State." The President of the Repubhc 
cannot be tried by any other tribunal and can be indicted only 
by the Chamber of Deputies. A Minister can be indicted for 
crimes committed in the exercise of his functions before the 
ordinary tribunals or before the Senate ; in the latter case he 
can be indicted only by the Chamber of Deputies. The Grovem- 
ment can send for trial before the Senate any person accused 
of an attempt against the security of the State, but such persons 
can also be indicted before the ordinary tribunals. M. Malvy 
was sent for trial before the Senate by the Chamber, at his own 
request, in 1918, and M. Caillaux, after having first been in- 
dicted"!before"a'''military tribunal, was sent for trial before the 
Senate^by the Government. 



THE POLITICAL SYSTEM 107 

the Senate, which has been a far worse drag on 
democracy and progress than the House of Lords — 
probably with its present restricted powers the least 
pernicious Second Chamber in the world. The 
French Constitution stultifies the Chamber of Depu- 
ties and renders it powerless by refusing it in 
the last resource the final decision, which should 
belong to the direct representatives of the people. 
A Second Chamber, to be at all tolerable, should 
have powers only of postponement and revision; 
the Senate has the power to make legislation im- 
possible. Even the measures of social reform that 
it has at last consented to pass have nearly all been 
emasculated. A case in point is the Old Age Pen- 
sions Law, which the Senate reduced to a mean and 
niggardly measure and which has proved a complete 
failure ; it is, indeed, almost a dead letter, as the 
great majority of people refuse to pay the contri- 
bution required in order to obtain a pension, and 
the Government dares not enforce the law. 

Thus the French Constitution requires drastic 
reforms in order to make the political system not 
only democratic, but even workable, for it can 
never work smoothly until the powers of the Senate 
are limited ; a system of two co-ordinate Houses of 
Parliament is an absurdity. But the suppression 
of the Senate is demanded by the parties of the 
Left arid, the existence of a Second Chamber is 
indefensible from a democratic point of view; its 
only raison d'etre is to be a check on democracy. 
If the German Empire could do without a Second 
Chamber, surely the French Republic can. On the 
other hand, we have to reckon with "the never- 
ending audacity of elected persons," and it would 
not be satisfactory to give uncontrolled power for 
four years to 600 Deputies ; some means must be 
found of keeping them under the constant control of 



108 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

the people, whether by referendum, the power of 
revocation in certain conditions, or what not. 

The control of the Executive by the legislature 
is as necessary as the control of the legislature itself 
by the people. The power of making treaties must 
be taken out of the hands of the President of the 
Republic, and, as in the United States, no treaty 
must be valid until it has been approved by Par- 
liament. French opinion of the Left is unani- 
mously in favour of this reform, which would make 
secret treaties impossible. But this is not enough : 
the Ministers, as in Switzerland, must be indi- 
vidually elected by the Chamber of Deputies, which 
would, of course, retain the power to dismiss them 
when it pleased. Nor should the dismissal of a 
single Minister entail the resignation of his col- 
leagues ; each Minister should be individually 
responsible to the Parliament which had elected 
him.^ In fact, the Cabinet system should be abol- 
ished and replaced by an Administration which 
would be an executive committee of Parliament. 
The theory of Ministerial solidarity has in France, as 
in England, been mischievous in its results, for it 
has again and again covered individual incapacity. 
A Parliament may be convinced that a particular 
Minister is mismanaging his department, but it will 
naturally hesitate to censure him if such a course 
involves the resignation of a Government with 
which it is satisfied as a whole. A case in point was 
that of M. Millerand, Minister of War in the second 
Viviani Cabinet, which came into power at the end 

1 M. Marcel Sembat has proposed that no meniber of Parlia- 
ment shall be eligible for office as a Minister. There is nauch to 
be said for this proposal, provided, of course, that the Ministers 
are directly elected by the Chamber. In France at present a 
Minister need not be a member of Parliament, and, in any case, 
he has the right to speak, although not to vote, in both Hotisea 
of Parliament. 



THE POLITICAL SYSTEM 109 

of August 1914. Early in 1915 it was already evi- 
dent that drastic changes in the methods of the 
Ministry of War were urgently necessary. The 
supply of munitions was quite inadequate and no 
effort was being made to increase production ,• the 
General Staff of the French Army continued to 
oppose the use of heavy artillery in the field, in 
spite of the experience of the war ; and the Director 
of Armaments was a General who refused on prin- 
ciple to supply the Army with anythmg but 
75 guns, holding that even rifles were use- 
less. M. Millerand obstinately defended the ob- 
scurantist policy of the Ministry of War. and 
refused to listen to the repeated demands of the 
Army Committees of the Senate and the Chamber 
for a change in methods and persons. The Army 
Committee of the Senate, of which M. Clemenceau 
was president, sent to the President of the Repub- 
lic and the Prime Minister an exhaustive report on 
the situation which was a damning and unanswer- 
able indictment of M. Millerand 's administration. 
M. Viviani made more than one effort to induce 
M. Millerand to resign, but the latter persistently 
refused to do so. When the matter was raised in the 
Chamber, M. Viviani made it a question of confi- 
dence and defended M. Millerand, who, as the 
Chamber would not take the responsibility of over- 
turning the Government, remained in office for more 
than a year with disastrous consequences to France 
and her Allies. 

These reforms in the Constitution would make it 
unnecessary to retain the office of President of the 
Republic, which could be suppressed. Only his 
ceremonial functions would remain and those 
could quite well be performed by the Prime 
Minister for the time being. It would also 
be unnecessary to preserve the power of dis- 



110 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

solving the Chamber. At present the President of 
the ilepubhc — that is, in practice, the Prime 
Minister — has the right to dissolve the Chamber 
with the consent of the Senate. The right has been 
exercised only once in the history of the Third 
Republic — by Marshal MacMahon m 1877. The 
circumstances in which it was exercised have pre- 
vented any of his successors from attempting to 
follow his example, but it is a mistake to say, as is 
commonly said, that the dissolution of the Chamber 
by Marshal MacMahon was unconstitutional, for the 
consent of the Senate was obtained to it. What 
was unconstitutional was Marshal MacMahon 's 
previous conduct in dismissing a Ministry that 
had the confidence of the Chamber and appointing 
one that had not. So long as the present system 
of nominating Ministers continues, it may be 
desirable to retain the power of dissolution ; there 
have been occasions during the present century 
when no Government could secure a permanent 
majority in the Chamber and when a dissolution 
might have cleared the air. But, if and when the 
Ministers are directly and individually elected by 
the Chamber, it would be enough to give a certain 
proportion of the electors in any constituency the 
right to demand at any time a poll on the question 
of withdrawing their Deputy's mandate. The dura- 
tion of Parliament should also be reduced to two 
years, or three at most. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT AND ITS CAUSES 

" How I laughed till I cried, rocking myself to and fro, in my 
pleasure at recognising in all their perfection those two old and 
implacable enemies of the honest man : the Administration and 
the Law." — Georges CotrnTELiNE. 

The French Socialist Party will go to the country 
at the next election with a programme including the 
immediate reform of the Constitution more or IciSs 
on the lines indicated in the last chapter, but a 
reform of the French Constitution is not an easy 
matter. Amendments of the Constitution can be 
made only by the National Assembly — the Senate 
and the Chamber of Deputies sitting together as 
one House — and the National Assembly can be 
summoned for the purpose only by a resolution 
adopted by a clear majority of all the members of 
the Senate and the Chamber. It is improbable that 
151 Senators would consent to a meeting of the 
National, Assembly if they thought that the aboli- 
tion of the Senate would be proposed, as it certainly 
would be ; and if the Senators voted solidly at the 
National Assembly against their own suppression, 
it would have to be supported by more than three- 
fourths of the Chamber in order to be passed. 
Moreover, it may be too late for any reform, how- 
ever drastic, of the present Constitution. The 

111 



112 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

Socialist Party in its manifesto on the subject spoke 
of such a reform as an immediate necessity, not as 
a complete satisfaction of its ultimate demands. 
It declared that revolution was necessary, and that 
it must be effected by direct action if necessary ; it 
also declared that the revolution would probably 
be followed by a temporary " dictatorship of the 
proletariat." In fact, the Parliamentary system 
is gravely discredited in France; anti-parliamen- 
tarism is rapidly increasing and is of two kinds — 
reactionary and revolutionary. The reactionaries 
wish to substitute autocratic for Parliamentary 
government; the revolutionaries tend more and 
more towards a system resembling that of the 
Russian Soviet Republic, based on decentralisation 
and communal autonomy. This is no new ideal in 
France : the Commune of Paris in 1871 was not 
unlike the Soviet system in a French form, and the 
Commune has never lost its hold on the imaginations 
and sympathies of French revolutionaries, who 
still regard it as an unsuccessful but glorious 
attempt to realise their ideals. Every year the 
Parisian Socialists and Trade Unionists make a 
solemn pilgrimage to the " mur des federes " — ^the 
wall in Pere-Lachaise cemetery in front of which 
the communards were shot by the soldiers of General 
de Gallifet. A large plot of ground adjoining the 
wall has been acquired by the Socialist party as a 
burying-ground for its members. 

It is impossible to deny that the growing dis- 
content with the Parliamentary system in France 
has too much justification. I have already said 
that there are many signs of an approaching end 
of the present regime. Among them is the huge 
crop of political scandals during the last two years ; 
for political regimes in France have a habit of 
foundering in an ocean of scandals — the affair of 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT ll3 

the necklace was a considerable factor in the down- 
fall of Louis XVI and Marie- Antoinette. Some of 
the recent political scandals have no doubt been 
manufactured by personal or political rancour, but 
they are none the less evidence of a state of 
nervosity and uneasiness in the public mind. It 
has always been a weakness of the French to 
attribute reverses of fortune to treason, but the 
hunt for traitors that has been going on during the 
war has been on an unprecedented scale. More- 
over, political passion has never been so high nor 
class feeling so bitter as since the inauguration of 
the "Union Sacree." The decadence of Parlia- 
ment is another symptom of approaching crisis. 
Among its principal causes are : (1) the unworkable 
system established by the Constitution which has 
enabled the Senate to paralyse Parliament ; (2) the 
consequent barren record of the Third Republic in 
regard to reforms, especially social reforms ; 
(3) the neglect by Parliament of economic ques- 
tions ; (4) the multiplicity of political parties and 
groups, which makes a homogeneous Ministry im- 
possible and forces Governments to depend on a 
composite majority of which the elements vary from 
time to time ; (5) the demoralising influence of the 
Parliamentary atmosphere on the Senators and 
Deputies and their tendency to shirk responsibili- 
ties ; (6) the corruption in French politics. 

We have already seen how the Constitution 
enables the Senate to paralyse Parliament. The 
result is that France is behind England and Ger- 
many in industrial and social legislation; it has a 
miserably inadequate system of old age pensions; 
it has no system of national insurance against sick- 
ness or accidents ; its Factory Acts are quite in- 
adequate and are not properly enforced ; there is no 
proper inspection of factories and workshops, the 

I 



114 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

conditions in which are often terribly insanitary ; 
women and girls and even children are allowed to 
be worked scandalously long hours ; there is almost 
no public sanitation at all.^ During the whole 
of my twelve years' residence in Paris I have 
never heard of a sanitary inspector, much less 
had a visit from one ; yet there are expensive flats 
in Paris the sanitary arrangements of which would 
not be tolerated for a moment in any English town. 
A large proportion of the houses in Paris are still 
unattached to the main drainage system and are 
drained into cesspools. I know a street in the 
Faubourg St. Germain where all the houses are in 
that condition. The landlords were ordered to 
abolish the cesspools and attach the houses to the 
main drainage system about fifteen years ago ; they 
have not done so yet and nobody shows the least 
disposition to make them — one of them is^ a high 
official in a Government department. The majority 
of the concierges' lodges in Paris are unfit for human 
habitation and are breeding grounds of disease, and 
the majority of the servants' bedrooms — "vthich in 
a Parisian apartment house are all together on the 
top floor — are cupboards without proper light or 
ventilation. I have more than once declined to take 
a flat because I refused to ask any human being to 
sleep in such places. All this continues because 
the propertied classes are the complete masters of 
France and nat one of the bourgeois political parties 

1 A general Eight Hours Law was passed in May 1919, but 
it simply established the principle of an eight-hour day and left 
the application to each trade to be settled by Reglementsd' adminis- 
tration publique, that is to say regulations with the force of law 
(answering to Orders in Council) made by the Government after 
taking the advice of the Conseil d'Etat, or by further laws. 
The application of the eight-hour day to the mines was regulated 
by a law passed in June 1919. In most other trades it has not 
yet been applied and is not likely to be. It was a mere vote- 
catching device never intended to be put into force. 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 115 

dares to touch their pockets. Yet enormous sums 
of public money are being spent to cure tuber- 
culosis while the insanitary conditions which make 
the ratio of that terrible disease much higher than 
in England are left untouched.^ 

The Senate is not entirely to blame for this state of 
things. What is particularly surprising is that even 
the Socialist party has never seriously tackled mat- 
ters of this kind, although one would have thought 
that they were its particular business. This is not 
because of any doctrinaire objection to merely 
palliative measures or any all-or-nothing policy; 
for the Socialist party devoted itself for six years to 
the anti-clerical campaign, which had no direct 
connection with Socialism although it undoubtedly 
promoted its growth, and later concentrated all 
its energies for several years on Proportional 
Representation. The exaggerated importance 
attached by Jaures to the latter reform was, indeed, 
the greatest mistake of his political career, for it 
divided the forces of the Left — since the Radicals 
were opposed to P.R. — at a moment when the 
reaction once more became threatening, and by 
diverting attention from the growth of militarism 
and Chauvinism undoubtedly contributed to fheir 
triumph in 1912-1914 with all its disastrous con- 
sequences. Far from adhering too strictly to social 
and economic questions, the Socialist party has 
neglected them in practice almost as much as the 
other parties. It has been active in propagating 
Socialist doctrine — quite properly and rightly — but 
it has not concerned itself with immediate social 
and economic reforms, the advocacy of which would 

^ There are from 150,000 to 200,000 deaths from tuberculosis 
in France every year, and the general death-rate is very high, 
although the climate of the greater part of the country is re- 
markably healthy. 

I 2 



116 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

have enormously increased its hold on the country. 
Too many French Socialist Deputies have paid very 
little attention to economics ; their socialism is little 
more than a vague aspiration. Hence it is that 
the Socialist party has never given serious con- 
sideration to the question of Free Trade and 
Protection, to the democratisation of the adminis- 
trative system, or to the various questions that 
have just been mentioned. It has been too much 
disposed to restrict its advocacy of immediate 
reforms to an indiscriminate demand for State 
monopolies, v/hich, as Jules Guesde has pointed out, 
do not at all conduce to the advent of Socialism or 
weaken in any way the capitalist system, and which 
in present economic conditions are usually per- 
nicious. A bourgeois capitalist State is quite 
incompetent to control or administer industry ; in 
France State monopolies are almost invariably mis- 
managed and the deplorable experience that the 
French people has had of their incompetence tends 
to discredit Socialism in so far as it is identified 
with them.^ I am glad to say that there is 
now a strong reaction in the French Socialist party 
against Etatisme, which is not only different from, 
but even opposed to, social democracy, nor have 
all French Socialists acquiesced in their identifica- 
tion — Jules Guesde and the strict Marxists voted 
against the purchase by the State of the Western 
Railway of France, one of the worst bargains ever 
made by a Government. 

The list of immediately urgent reforms is by no 
means exhausted ; there are many other matters 
which the Socialist party might have taken up to 
its own advantage and that of the country. Gener- 
ally speaking, French law favours the landlord 
against the tenant, the capitalist against the man 
1 See Chapter VII, page 235. 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 117 

who earns his living, the creditor against the debtor. 
This is not a legal treatise and it is impossible to 
enter into this matter in detail, but one of the most 
glaring examples may be mentioned — the enormous 
powers given by the law to the owners of house 
property. A French landlord is allowed by the law 
to force a tenant to furnish and keep furnished a 
house or flat during the whole of his tenancy with 
objects of sufficient value to cover the rent of the 
whole period for which the premises are taken. The 
tenant not only has to pay the rent on quarter-day, 
but has to give the landlord a guarantee that he 
will be able to pay it until the end of his tenancy. 
If he has, for instance, a nine years' lease of a fiat 
rented at £100 a year, he must put furniture in it 
to the value of at least £900, and, if he wishes to 
move before the end of the tenancy, the landlord 
can prevent him from taking away his furniture 
unless and until he has paid the whole of the rent 
for the unexpired term, even though the rent be 
fully paid up to date. The only alternative for the 
tenant is to find somebody else to take over the 
tenancy, and the landlord can arbitrarily refuse to 
accept any new tenant without giving any reason, 
unless there is a provision to the contrary in the 
lease or agreement. I have never consented to 
take a flat unless the landlord would agree to a 
provision limiting his power of refusal and I 
have found many landlords unwilling to agree 
to it. It must not be thought that this power is 
only theoretical. The landlord — or rather landlady, 
for it was a woman — of an Italian friend of mine 
who was called tg Italy by the war refused out of 
mere spite to accept any other tenant and forced 
him to keep the fiat rather than pay at once the 
rent of the two years of the lease which were un- 
expired. I am glad to add that in this case 



118 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

Madame Vautour — the Parisian slang term for an 
owner of house property — was hoist with her own 
petard, for the Courts decided that my friend, the 
subject of an aUied nation, v/as entitled to benefit 
by the moratorium which exempted all mobilised 
men from the payment of rent until six months 
after the signature of peace. Landlords also have 
the right under French law to force a tenant to pay 
three or six months' rent in advance on taking a 
house or flat, which amount is counted as payment 
for the last three or six months of the lease. The 
landlord has thus the use of his tenant's money 
Vt^ithout interest for the whole term of the lease, 
and he has further the right to confiscate the sum 
paid in the event of any breach of the lease on the 
part of the tenant without prejudice to any claim 
for damages. A tenant in France is compelled to 
insure against fire, not only the fabric of his own 
house or flat, but also those of his next-door neigh- 
bours' on either side of him. These are but some 
examples of the oppressive powers of French land- 
lords. I cannot remember ever having read of a 
proposal that they should be diminished in any 
French paper or heard of one being made by any 
French politician. Socialist or other. Yet such 
matters as these are far more important to the 
people than the State ownership of a railway or the 
method of voting. 

There is another matter in regard to which reform 
is urgently needed, perhaps more than any other — 
the judicial system. Much might be said about the 
delays of French civil procedure which remind one 
of the famous case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. I have 
reason to be informed on that subject, for I was the 
defendant in a civil case which began in January 
1909, judgment was given Tn my favour in Novem- 
ber 1917, and I have not yet obtained execution at 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 119 

the time of writing (May 1919), although there was 
no appeal on either side. I paid the sum of money 
claimed from me into court, or rather into the Caisse 
des Depots et Consignations, which has had the use 
of it for ten years and does not seem anxious to give 
it up. It is fair to say that the war prolonged the 
case by perhaps three years; it would have 
lasted only a trifle of seven years or so in normal 
times. 

But far more important to the nation is the 
criminal procedure, since it involves the loss of 
liberty, or even of life, to persons who may be 
innocent. I have said that the French public has 
no confidence in the administration of justice ; I am 
now obliged to add that its want of confidence is 
fully justified. The French criminal procedure is 
quite literally mediaeval — it is, in fact, the system 
of the Inquisition almost unchanged. In theory, 
French, like English, law presumes an accused 
person to be innocent until he is proved to be 
guilty ; in practice, French judges assume him to be 
guilty until he has proved himself to be innocent. 
In France, the preliminary stage of a criminal case 
is called the instruction; the jiige d'instruction 
answers to the magistrate before whom an English 
prisoner is first brought. I am speaking, of 
course, of important offences ; lesser ones are dealt 
with directly b}'^ the Tribunal Correctionel, which 
answers to the English police court ; it is composed 
of three judges sitting without a jury. The juge 
(IHnstruction has to decide whether or not an 
accused person shall be committed for trial, but his 
functions and methods are very different from those 
of the English magistrate who has tlie same duty. 
The magistrate need not go thoroughly into the 
merits of the case — when the accused reserves his 
defence, he cannot; all that he has to decide is 



120 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

whether there is a prima facie ease for a jury, 
supposing that he is not himself competent to deal 
with the matter or does not think it desirable to do 
so. The fact that the magistrate commits a 
prisoner for trial does not necessarily mean that he 
believes tiim to be guilty nor does the magistrate 
think it his duty to try to prove the guilt of the 
prisoner; he is an arbiter between the prosecution 
and the defence. The juge dHnstruction, on the 
other hand, is a collaborator of the prosecution, 
and his business is to try to establish the guilt of 
the accused person — indeed he begins by assuming 
his guilt. If he is finally convinced of the innocence 
of the accused, or even not convinced of his guilt, 
he returns a non-lieu, that is to say, he dismisses 
the case ; he commits a prisoner for trial only if and 
when he himself believes him to be guilty, and he 
makes a report to that effect. It will be seen that 
the powers of a juge dHnstruction are much greater 
than those of an English magistrate, and that the 
instruction is a much more important factor in a 
French criminal case than is the preliminary in- 
quiry in an English one. Indeed the instruction in 
France is more important than the actual trial, for 
the report of the juge dHnstruction is the most 
important evidence for the prosecution at the trial ; 
it is a voluminous document giving the whole 
history of the case, the evidence of the witnesses 
heard durinsf the instruction, and the judge's reasons 
for concluding that the prisoner is guilty. When- 
ever there is a miscarriage of justice in France, it 
can almost always be traced to the instruction; 
that is the experience of all that have investigated 
such cases. 

The conditions in which the instruction takes 
place make a miscarriage of justice very probable. 
In the first place, the instruction is secret ; until 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 121 

recently counsel could not even be present at it, but 
for some years it has been the law that the accused 
must be accompanied by his counsel during his 
interviews with the juge dHnstruction. Counsel is 
not, however, present at the examination of wit- 
nesses, although he has access to their depositions. 
This secrecy is most injurious to the accused, who 
is kept under a cloud for weeks and even months 
while the public has no means of judging the value 
of the charges against him, and it does not serve the 
ends of justice. It is obvious that secrecy gives the 
opportunity for irregularities, pressure, and abuses 
of all kinds, and, human nature being what it is, it 
would be unreasonable to expect the opportunity 
never to be used. One of the first and most 
essential guarantees of justice is publicity; the 
secrecy of the instruction is undoubtedly one of the 
chief causes of the distrust and suspicion with which 
the administration of justice is generally regarded in 
France. The law quite logically forbids the revela- 
tion or publication of any information about the 
instruction, but the law is not observed in practice. 
The newspapers interview witnesses as they leave 
the chambers of the juge d' instruction and publish 
their accounts of their own evidence, which are 
almost invariably inaccurate. All sorts of false or 
garbled reports of the proceedings appear in the 
Press, which sometimes also publishes communica- 
tions of an obviously semi-official character illegally 
supplied to it by the ju^e dHnstruction himself, or 
even by the Ministry of Justice. These communica- 
tions usually aim at discrediting the accused and 
are often more tendencious than the ordinary news- 
paper reports. The accused has no remedy except 
that of protestation. Moreover, the newspapers 
are allowed to comment freely on the case while it 
is proceeding and to defend the thesis of the guilt 



122 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

or innocence of the accused without even having 
the material for forming a judgment. As M. Pierre 
Mille once said in the Temps, in England the Press 
is allowed to know the facts of a case and the evi- 
dence given in it, but it is not allowed to comment 
on them until the verdict has been given ; in France 
the Press is allowed to comment on them without 
knowing them. In the Steinheil murder case, to 
give only one example, the Matin was permitted to 
assume from the first that Mme. Steinheil was the 
murderer of her husband and her mother and to 
denounce a new person every other day as her 
accomplice, for there is no effective libel law in 
France.^ The prejudice inevitably created by such 
methods as these in the minds of the jurors who 

* The French law does not permit the justification of a libel ; 
if the publication complained of is defamatory, the Court must 
condemn the defendant, whether it be true or nob. The result 
is, on the one hand, that an action for libel cannot clear the 
prosecutor's character, and that the verdict carries no weight, 
and, on the other, that the Court, having no means of knowing 
whether the defamation is true or not, always inflicts trivial 
damages, which are no deterrent. Moreover, the delays in 
French procedure are such that an action for libel usually comes 
on so long after the publication of the libel that the latter is 
already forgotten and the harm, if any, has been done. Few 
people think it worth while to bring a libel action in these cir- 
cumstances ; the majority prefer, if they do anything, to use 
the right of reply — the French law obliges a paper which has 
attacked anybody to publish a reply from him in the same place 
and of the same length as the attack. But papers often refuse 
to obey the law in this regard and then prolonged legal pro- 
ceedings are necessary to make them do so. The net result is 
that French papers publish with impunity outrageous calumnies 
on public raen and even on private individuals, and some of them 
find a source of income in the threat of such publication. Press 
calumny is used, as Anatole France has said, by the capitalist 
interests to ruin any politician that has the courage and honesty 
to refuse to be ruled by them. M. Caillaux is one of the most 
conspicuous victims of this method. The lack of an effective 
libel law is the reason why French juries so often acqmt people 
who have taken the law into their own hands by shooting the 
editor of a paper that has calumniated them. 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 123 

eventually try the ease need not be insisted upon; 
indeed, it is not surprising that miscarriages of 
justice are numerous in France. What is surpris- 
ing is that there are not many more.^ 

In the secrecy of his chambers, uncontrolled by 
public opinion, the juge dHnstruction subjects the 
accused person to a severe cross-examination with 
the object of entrapping him into compromising 
admissions. It may easily be imagined how an 
ignorant or stupid person is likely to fare in the 
hands of a skilled lawyer with the power to put him 
on the rack several times a week for months to- 
gether, especially when he is physically and 
mentally weakened by long detention in solitary 
confinement. For bail is seldom granted in France, 
and detention is deliberately used as a means of 
pressure on an accused person in the hope that he 
will finally inculpate himself. Moreover, the condi- 
tions of what is called in France " preventive " 
imprisonment are much more severe than in 
England; the prisoner, whom the law assumes to 
be innocent, is not allowed to have any visitors 
except such as are authorised by the juge dHnstnic- 
tion, who has complete discretion in the matter. 
M. Caillaux, for instance, who will have been in 
prison for two years before his trial, has not, during 

^ Inquiries into violent or sudden deaths are also held in secret 
by a juge d'' instruction and are sometimes very prolonged, 
lasting for many -months. While they last, if the case be in 
any way sensational, there are misleading and inaccurate reports 
in the Press, a crop of rumours more or less false, and a general 
atmosphere of suspicion. There are still people in France who 
believe that President F^lix Faure was murdered, and that a 
disreputable Deputy, called Syveton, who committed suicide 
about fifteen years ago, was killed by M. Combes or by the 
Freemasons. These and similar legends woiild never have grown 
up had a system of public inquests existed in France. Sudden 
deaths are not always investigated and a doctor's certificate ia 
much too readily accepted as finah 



124 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

the whole of that period, been allowed to receive 
any visitors except his wife and his counsel. Nobody- 
supposed that M, Caillaux would fly the country 
if he were allowed out on bail, but it suited the 
purposes of the Government that he should not be 
at liberty; it is true that his case was at 
first in the hands of a military tribunal, but the 
same thing might have happened if it had been 
otherwise. 

The length of time often taken by an instruction 
is one of the worst abuses of the French judicial sys- 
tem ; in a case of any importance — political or other 
— it usually lasts a year or more. There is no Habeas 
Corpus Act in France and no legal limit to the time 
which an instruction may take. Nor is it necessary 
that there should be any evidence against an accused 
person before he is arrested. It is a common prac- 
tice to arrest a man on mere suspicion and keep him 
in prison indefinitely while the juge d'instruction 
tries to find evidence against him and repeatedly 
cross-examines him in the hope of inducing him to 
commit himself ; any self-respecting judge will wait 
a year before he gives up the attempt, especially if 
the Government in power has any particular reason 
for desiring a conviction. The case of the late 
M. Turmel was a bad example of this method. He 
was arrested simply because a number of Swiss 
bank notes were found in his locker at the Chamber 
of Deputies, and was kept in prison for months on 
a charge of treason, although no evidence of it was 
ever discovered. There is nothing illegal in possess- 
ing the bank notes of a neutral country in time of 
war and at first M. Turmel refused, on the advice 
of his counsel, to answer any questions. His 
refusal was quite legal, for there is no law compelling 
an accused person to answer any questions, but, 
as the judge declared his intention of keeping 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 125 

M. Turmel in prison until he did answer, the latter 
at last gave various conflicting and obviously un- 
true accounts of the origin of the money. That 
fact shows that the origin was a shady one — an 
hypothesis widely credited in Paris was that 
M. Turmel had made money by houses of ill-fame 
in Switzerland — but it is no evidence of treason, 
and there is, in fact, not the smallest reason to 
suppose that M. Turmel was a traitor to his 
country, although he was not at all a reputable 
person. He ultimately died in prison protesting 
his innocence. In England the case against him 
would have been dismissed at the first or second 
hearing. 

This case was also an example of the pernicious 
influence of politics on the administration of justice 
in France. It is probable that the treatment of 
M. Turmel was due to a hope that he might in- 
criminate M. Caillaux; he was, in fact, induced to 
make some statements about M. Caillaux, but they 
were either so inaccurate or so unimportant that no 
use could be made of them, and they were not 
even mentioned by the Public Prosecutor in the 
indictment of M. Caillaux. In any case, whatever 
may have been behind the Turmel affair, there can 
be no doubt about political interference in judicial 
matters ; the French system makes it inevitable. 
Justice in France is not independent; it is under 
the control of the Minister of Justice, that is to say, 
of a politician. It is the Minister of Justice who 
decides to what particular juge dHnstruction a case 
is to be entrusted, and even what particular judge 
is to preside at the trial — there are three judges at 
a French criminal trial, but the President is the 
only one that counts. The Minister of Justice can 
and does transfer a case from one juge d'instruction 
to another at his will and pleasure; he fixes the 



126 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

dates of trials and postpones them when he pleases, 
not that he has legally the power to postpone them, 
but he can instruct the Public Prosecutor to apply 
for a postponement, which is never refused by the 
Court in such circumstances. When Villain, the 
murderer of Jaures, himself applied to the Court 
to postpone his trial until after the war, the appli- 
cation was opposed by the Public Prosecutor and 
refused. A fortnight later, the Government of the 
day having changed its mind, the Public Prosecutor 
himself applied for the postponement of the trial 
until after the war and it was granted. 
Villain was eventually tried four years and seven 
months after the date of the murder. What respect 
for the administration of justice can there be in 
a country where a court of justice acts in this way 
merely to suit the political convenience of a Govern- 
ment ? It is not only for political reasons that 
pressure is brought to bear on judges. Accused 
persons have found it a great advantage to them to 
have a friend or acquaintance in the Cabinet or to 
know people that have ; in this, as in other matters, 
influence — the piston — goes a long way in France. 
This is only to be expected, since the man on whom 
the advancement and the career of those who 
administer justice depend is also their legal superior. 
In the same way, the military judges are entirely 
under the control of the Minister of War, who is 
legally the " Chef de la Justice militaire," who 
instructs the Public Prosecutor, decides to whom the 
instruction is to be entrusted, and chooses, at least 
indirectly, the members of the court-martial. 
In Paris, the members of the court-martial 
are nominated by the military governor, who is 
under the direct orders of the Minister of War. 
This system helps to make the Dreyfus case more 
intelligible. The Public Prosecutor is no more 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 127 

independent than the judges; he takes his orders 
from the Government. Nor is influence exercised 
only by poUticians. In a case within my own 
knowledge in which a woman of good family with 
influential social connections was accused of a 
fraud, the juge dHnstruction actually received 
personal friends of hers, not as witnesses, and was 
almost persuaded by their representations to dismiss 
the case. Only the firm attitude of the counsel 
for the plaintiff prevented him from doing 
so and he ultimately committed the lady for 
trial. One of the reasons given to him for letting 
her off was that she was a friend of King 
Edward VII. 

Another evil is the way in which criminal pro- 
cedure is abused by private persons for their own 
ends — usually to obtain payment of a debt. In 
France, anybody can lay an information (" deposer 
une plainte") against another; it is then for the 
Public Prosecutor to decide whether or not there is 
a prima facie case for taking action against the 
person accused. Even if the accusation turns out 
to be quite baseless, the person unjustly accused 
has no remedy against the accuser; an action for 
malicious prosecution can lie only against a person 
who, instead of merely laying an information, has 
summoned another directly heioie the Tribunal 
Correctionel. The result is that " plaintes " are 
sent in recklessly, sometimes out of mere spite, 
sometimes by way of intimidation to recover a civil 
debt or for some similar reason. Although there is 
no publicity, the fact that a " plainte " has been 
made against a man is inscribed in his " easier 
judiciare " (police register), and if no action has 
been taken upon it that fact is not always recorded. 
Moreover, the author of the **' plainte" usually 
takes care to tell people about it, and there are 



128 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

always some ready to say that there is probably 
something in it. A " plainte " is thus sometimes 
an effective method of intimidating a timid 
person, especially since, as has already been 
said, all Frenchmen have a horror of any sort 
of contact with the police or the administration of 
justice. 

French judicial procedure has some excellent 
points ; for instance, criminal and civil proceedings 
can be taken at the same time against a person for 
the same matter. If, for example, X has defrauded 
Y of a sum of money, Y can move the Public 
Prosecutor to take criminal proceedings against X, 
in which Y can appear as ''^ parti civil"; if X is 
convicted, the Court not only punishes him, but also 
gives judgment against him in Y's favour. But 
this system, excellent in itself, is sometimes abused 
owing to the practice in the less serious cases of 
allowing the criminal prosecution to be withdrawn 
if the accused pays up, which encourages the use of 
criminal procedure to recover a debt. The absence 
in French criminal trials of anything like the laws 
of evidence, which is often criticised by English 
lawyers, is, in my opinion, an advantage. The 
system of asking a witness to say what he knows 
about the case and allowing him to make his own 
statement instead of merely answering questions no 
doubt prolongs the proceedings, but I am convinced 
that it serves the ends of justice better than the 
English system. A witness thus allowed to say 
what he likes will almost invariably reveal his own 
character and, if he be not telling the truth, is 
almost sure to commit himself; for, of course, 
after having made his statements he can be 
cross-examined. What is objectionable is the 
cross-examination to which the prisoner in a 
criminal trial is subjected by the presiding judge, 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 129 

who usually presumes his guilt. I believe that this 
practice is illegal and that strictly the President 
ought merely to put to the prisoner the formal 
questions about his name, place of residence, etc. ; 
but, whether legal or not, the practice is universal 
and it ought to be stopped.^ 

It is not too much to say that the evils of French 
criminal procedure, and in particular of the secret 
instruction, are recognised by the vast majority of 
Frenchmen. I never met a criminal barrister who 
did not condemn the secret instruction, and an 
alteration of the law in this regard has been 
demanded for years by leading members of the 
French Bar. When M. Briand was Prime Minister 
for the first time he talked of abolishing the secret 
instruction and substituting for it a preliminary 
inquiry in public as in England. But he did not 
carry his intention into effect ; it is possible that 



^ The profession of notary or solicitor (avoue) in France is a 
monopoly ; the number of notaries and soKcitors is limited, and 
nobody can enter either profession except by purchasing the 
practice of a retiring member of it. This objectionable system, 
which is a survival of the ancien regime, means that only men 
with money can become notaries or solicitors, and they some- 
times have more money than brains, although, of course, they 
ha^'e to obtain certain qualifications. French avoues are, as a 
rule, less competent than English solicitors and have a much 
less important position ; a great deal of the work done in England 
by solicitors is done in France by barristers (avocats), who 
have, as a rule, more legal knowledge than the solicitors. In 
France, a client can address himself to a barrister directly without 
passing through a solicitor, and it is very common to go first to 
a barrister, who instructs the solicitor, when it becomes necessary 
to call in his services, which are required by law for an action 
in the High Court. The Bar is open to anybody that can pass 
the necessary examinations, and the French Bar is very brilliant. 
French judges are not, as in England, chosen from the Bar ; 
the judicial profession is a separate one, in which men begin by 
holding tlie least important posts and can rise to the highest. 
Judges of every rank are very badlj^ paid and the standard is 
not so high as in England. 

K 



130 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

the proposed change was opposed by the Parquet ^ 
and the pohce. It is astonishing tliat no pohtical 
party, not even the SociaHst, has ever made a 
serious attempt to get rid of abuses which ahnost 
everybody condemns and which bring the adminis- 
tration of justice into contempt. The indifference 
of pohticians in this regard is, unfortunately, 
typical, and the fact that it is so is one of 
the reasons why the parliamentary system is 
discredited. 

I should, however, be sorry to give the impres- 
sion that the Third Republic has done nothing. It 
has accomplished at least one great task — the 
liberation of France from clerical domination. The 
Education Law of 1882, due to Jules Ferry, which 
secularised the national schools and substituted lay 
teachers for the ecclesiastics and nuns who had until 
then taught in many of them, was a great achieve- 
ment which has had an immense influence for good 
on France. Secular education has changed for the 
better in many regards the mentality of the bulk 
of the French people ; it has produced more self- 
reliance and initiative and increased toleration. The 
elementary-school teachers are a fine body of men 
and women whose influence has been admirable. To 
them more than to any other body is due the 
diminution of Chauvinism and the grov/th of pacific 
and internationalist sentiment — there is a great 
difference in this regard between the generations 
that have been educated in the secular schools and 
their predecessors. The war, and in particular the 
victory, caused a recrudescence of Chauvinism, but 
it seemed more general than it really was, if only 

1 The chief Public Prosecutor's department in Paris. There 
is an Assize Court with resident judges in the chief town of each 
department, and to each is attached a Pubhc Prosecutor (Pro- 
cureur de la RipubUque), 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 131 

for the reason that during the war only Chauvinists 
were allowed to express their opinions. The seed 
sown in the elementary schools will yet bear fruit ; 
already there is a marked reaction against the tem- 
porary intoxication that victory produced. In 
every country village the elementary-school teacher 
is the centre of progressive thought and action, as 
the cure is the centre of reaction; the school, how- 
ever humbly, represents the future, as the church 
represents the past. In the greater part of rural 
France the school has conquered the church, not by 
anti-Catholic propaganda, but simply by dissipating 
the ignorance and docility which are essential con- 
ditions of clerical domination; but there are still 
many places where the teacher has a hard fight. 
Where the Church is still strong the position of a 
teacher sometimes calls almost for heroism; there 
have been cases in which quite young girls have 
quietly continued to do their duty in the face of 
boycotting and petty persecution sometimes reach- 
ing the point of a refusal, instigated by the cure, to 
supply them with food, so that they have had to 
get it from a neighbouring village. All over France 
the elementary-school teachers have been the 
standard-bearers of progress, the pioneers of liberal 
ideas; the proportion of Socialists among them is 
large, and they have fought bravely and success- 
fully for the right to combine for the protection of 
their own interests. In June 1919 they added to 
the debt of gratitude which France already owed 
them by refusing to continue the distribution in 
the schools of literature about German atrocities 
supplied by the Government for the purpose of 
nourishing racial hatred. 

The separation of Church and State in 1905 made 
the neutrality of the nation in religious matters 
complete and deprived the clergy of the authority 

K 2 



132 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

that they derived from their position as Government 
officials ; since then the influence of the Church has 
rapidly declined, especially in the rural districts. 
Napoleon devised the Concordat in the belief that 
it would enable him to control the Church and keep 
the clergy in order; he soon found out his error, 
and himself declared that the Concordat was the 
greatest mistake of his career. It is not the 
business of the State to control the Church, and 
even if it were the Concordat never enabled it to do 
so. Under the Restoration and the Second Empire 
the Church to a great extent controlled the State, 
and that was the case even in the early years of the 
Third Republic. W^hen the Church saw that the 
Third Republic was escaping from its control, it 
became the moving spirit in every attempt to 
destroy it, and nearly succeeded in the last decade 
of the nineteenth century by means of the Dreyfus 
affair. That awoke the French people to the 
danger and led to the separation of Church and 
State. The neutrality of the State in matters of 
religion is carried to its logical conclusion; no 
representative of the Government attends a reli- 
gious ceremony in his official capacity, although, 
of course, there is nothing to prevent him from 
going to Mass in his private capacity. Religion 
has become in France what it ought to be — a purely 
private concern with which the nation as a whole 
has nothing to do, since the individuals that com- 
pose the nation are not agreed about it; therefore 
the representatives of the nation have no right to 
take part in a religious ceremony in its name. France 
is the only belligerent country where there have 
been no official religious ceremonies of any kind 
during the war. French Christians — Catholic and 
l*rotestant — and even French Jews have, of course, 
applied to their respective deities for assistance in 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 133 

' slaughtering their fellow Christians and fellow Jews 
on the other side of the Rhine — who have returned 
the compliment — but that is their affair. The 
French nation as a whole has left God out of a busi- 
ness with which, one would like to believe, he had 
nothing to do. It did not pray for victory and has 
not returned thanks for it. 

Another achievement of the Third Republic was 
the Associations Law of 1901, of which Waldeck- 
Rousseau was the author. It is known in England 
chiefly by its third chapter, which dealt with the 
Religious Orders, but it was, in fact, a great 
measure of liberation, which for the first time estab- 
lished complete freedom of association in France by 
making it lawful to combine for any legal purpose 
without authorisation. The only exceptions were 
the Religious Orders, for which authorisation 
remains necessary. The methods adopted in deal- 
ing with the Religious Orders may be open to ques- 
tion, but there can be no doubt as to the necessity 
of dealing with them or as to the excellent results 
of the law. Institutions of the character of Reli- 
gious Orders, whose members have surrendered 
their individual liberty, are tied by vows, and are 
under absolutely despotic control, so that they can- 
not even go out without leave, cannot be put in the 
same category as ordinary associations and at least 
require special regulations. It is, for instance, 
contrary to public policy to allow very young 
persons to take life vows the implications of which 
they often do not understand or to allow persons 
that profess to have left the world to superintend 
the education of children who are going to live in 
it. It is an open question whether people have the 
right to withdraw themselves from all the duties of 
citizenship ; at any rate, if they do so, they cannot 
claim to exercise its rights. The mischief of the 



134 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

Religious Orders is that they always take care to 
keep one foot in this world ; if they wish to get out 
of it, they should be made to stay out of it entirely 
unless and until they wish to come back for good. 
Periodical inspection of all conventual establish- 
ments is necessary to ensure their proper adminis- 
tration and to prevent abuses ; at every inspection 
all the inmates should be interviewed in private by 
the inspector. It is untrue that people are never kept 
in conventual establishments against their will. Even 
in those Religious Orders where the vows are only 
annual and the members have, therefore, the right 
by the laws of the Church to leave at the expiration 
of any year, they are often taught that it would be 
a sin to leave and great moral pressure is brought 
upon them if they wish to do so. A friend of mine 
in France had to threaten to send for the police 
before he could succeed in getting his sister out of a 
convent which she wanted to leave, although she 
had not taken life vows and was and has since 
remained a perfectly good Catholic. There seems 
to be no reason why Religious Orders should be 
allowed to hold property; since they profess " holy 
poverty," let them practise it, as even the Fran- 
ciscans do not at present, although St. Francis for- 
bade them to own any collective property and 
ordered them to live by begging. Legislation based 
on these principles would, in my opinion, have been 
more effective than the provisions of the Associa- 
tions Law. Above all, Religious Orders should be 
forbidden to accept any probationer under the age 
of thirty ; that would soon lead to the disappearance 
of most of them, for the great majority continue to 
exist only by the method of " catching 'em young." 
They have hitherto obtained rnost of their recruits 
from their own schools. 

Socialism will solve the problem of the Religious 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 135 

Orders, most of which would not survive the aboli- 
tion of private property in the means of production, 
for they are capitalist organisations living on 
unearned increment and performing no economic 
service to the community. Socialism would also be 
the most effective weapon against clerical domina- 
tion, which depends on the existence of ecclesiasti- 
cal property under the control of the clergy. In a 
Socialist community the clergy would either have 
to work for their living like other people or else be 
entirely dependent on the laity, which would ulti- 
mately mean their control by the laity. This, as an 
eminent Catholic theologian explained to me many 
years ago, is one of the reasons why the Church is 
and always must be opposed to Socialism. But the 
French Republic had to deal with these problems in 
existing social conditions, and, although it has 
made mistakes, its methods have been fairly satis- 
factory on the whole, considering tlie difficulties 
with which it had to contend. It is untrue that the 
Church in France is or ever has been persecuted by 
the Republic ; separation gave it complete freedom, 
and the State does not interfere with it in any way. 
The Bishops are perhaps less free than they were 
under the Concordat, but, if that be so, it is the 
fault of the Vatican, against which the Concordat 
to some extent protected them. If it has not been 
generally understood in England that it was neces- 
sary to destroy clerical domination in France, that 
is because so little is known in England of French 
history. It does not come within the scope of this 
book to give an account of the part played in France 
in the nineteenth century by the Church and by the 
" Congregation " — the Religious Orders and the 
Jesuits in particular. A good idea of it will be 
obtained from M. Emile Bourgeois's " History of 
Modern France," of which an excellent English 



136 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

translation has been published in the Cambridge 
Historical Series. M. Bourgeois is very far from 
being a vulgar anti-clerical of the Homais type and 
his presentation of the facts is scrupulously impar- 
tial. I do not mean that he has no bias, for that 
would be absurd, but he does not allow it to make 
him invent, conceal, or distort facts, although he 
sometimes passes judgment on them, as the his- 
torian has a right tc do. I disagree with many of 
his judgments and his political point of view is not 
mine, but I recognise his accuracy.^ The facts^ — • 
especially the history of the reigns of Louis XVIII, 
Charles X, and Napoleon III — will make anybody 
understand why Gambetta said : " Le Clericalisme, 
voila I'ennemi ! ^' 

Unfortunately, since the law for the separation of 
Church and State was passed in December 1905, 
Parliament has become more and more impotent. 
No reform of any importance has been carried since 
that date, except the income tax, and that, as has 
been said, was emasculated by the Senate. This is 
in great measure due to the break-up of the Bloc — 
a coalition of all the groups of the Left, including 
the Socialists — with the support of which Waldeck- 
Rousseau came into power in 1899. The Waldeck- 
Rousseau and Combes Ministries, whose majority 
was form.ed by the Bloc, were unusually long-lived 
for Ministries of the Third Republic — each of them 
lasted about three years. It was during those six 
years that the Associations Law and the ecclesiasti- 
cal legislation were passed, thanks to the cohesion 
of the Bloc. At the general election of 1902 the 
Bloc obtained a large majority in the country, but 

^ This appreciation needs to be qualified as regards the last 
forty pages of the book, which deal with events after 1899. 
They are too sumnaary, show signs of having been hastily 
•written and contain several mistakes in matters of fact. 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 137 

it fell to pieces in 1906 as a result of M. Clemen- 
ceau's quarrel with the Socialists, due to his hos- 
tility to the Labour movement and his bloody- 
repression of strikes. While M. Clemenceau was 
Prime Minister from 1906 to 1909 he, also disinte- 
grated the Radical Party, which was the largest 
section of the Bloc. At the general election of 1906 
he gave his support to candidates calling themselves 
Radicals who were as conservative as Sir Charles 
Dilke declared all French Radicals to be, and, as 
the genuine Radicals became more and more dis- 
satisfied with his policy and joined with the Social- 
ists against him, he introduced the system of govern- 
ing with shifting majorities composed now of one 
combination, now of another, and often including 
the Centre and even the Right. M. Briand^ who 
succeeded M. Clemenceau as Prime Minister, con- 
tinued this method and completed the chaos. His 
conduct in the railway strike of 1910, which he 
suppressed by mobilising the railwaymen — a 
measure of doubtful legality — further widened the 
breach between the bourgeois parties and the 
Socialists and Trade Unionists, which has never 
since been bridged over; all subsequent attempts 
to reconstitute the Bloc have failed. The Chamber 
is now split up into a score of heterogeneous groups, 
most of which represent interests rather than 
principles. They have so little sense or meaning 
that candidates often present themselves to their 
constituencies with some vague label, such as 
" Republican of the Left," and decide only after 
their election what group they will join. Even the 
Right, small as it is, is split up into two or three 
groups between which there is no perceptible differ- 
ence of opinion or even of method, and it would pass 
the wit of man to explain the differences between 
the groups of the Left. There are, for instance, 



138 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

in addition to the Radical Party, two groups 
calling themselves respectively " Group of the Radi- 
cal Left" and "Group of Radical and Socialist- 
Radical Republicans " ; the latter, if I am not mis- 
taken, has seventeen members. Four parties would 
be enough to represent all the political tendencies 
in France — the Socialists, the bourgeois Left, the 
Centre and the Right. ^ 

The Radical Party, which has now for many 
years been the largest political party in France, 
has a great responsibility for this chaotic system 
and for the discredit into which Parliament has 
fallen. Had it taken in hand long ago the reform 
of the Constitution, it would have been carried by 
now and French parliamentary institutions might 
be in a healthier condition. But the Radical Party 
is no more homogeneous than the other political 
groups. Its sole bond of union was anti-clericalism 
and its members differ widely on every other ques- 
tion, so that, since the settlement of the ecclesiasti- 
cal problems, it has been divided and impotent. 
An advanced section of the party calling themselves 
Socialist-Radicals (" Radicaux-Socialistes ") made 
an effort to promote social reforms, but never 
carried the bulk of the party with them, and they 
themselves are now as divided as the rest. 
Even the income tax was, as I have already said, 
opposed by the Senate, in which there was a 
large Radical majority, and took years to pass. 

^ The Radicals, the so-called " Socialist Republicans " or 
Independent Socialists, and the other groups of the bourgeois 
Left, answer more or less to the English Liberal Party, but two 
thirds of their members are at least as conservative as most 
English Tories. The groups of the Centre, of which the Alliance 
Democratique is the most important, represent Republican con- 
servative opinion and in most regards are about where the 
English Tory party was half a century ago. The Right is com- 
posed of actual reactionaries — the Catholic Party, the rump of 
the old Royalists and the Nationalists (es-Bonapartists and 
ex-Boulangists) . 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 139 

Yet the old system of direct taxation in France was 
as lenient to the rich as it was oppressive to the 
poor; being levied, not on the income of the tax- 
payer, but on the amount of his rent, it bore no 
relation to his taxable capacity. M. Caillaux, 
the author of the Income Tax Bill, instanced in one 
of his speeches in the Chamber the case of a house 
at Marseilles where the tenant of a shop on the 
street making about £400 a year profit paid more 
in taxation than a financial company earning large 
profits, which had an office on an upper floor in the 
same house. Moreover, a man earning his liveli- 
hood l3y the exercise of a trade or profession had to 
pay an extra tax called the patente levied on the 
rent both of his business premises and of his private 
residence, with the result that earned incomes were 
taxed about three times as heavily as unearned 
ones. Such was the sj^stem defended by many poli- 
ticians calling themselves Radicals because it suited 
the petits rentiers whose votes they wanted. Even 
when the income tax at last became law, persons 
engaged in agriculture were exempted from it ; this 
scandalous injustice is only an example of the way 
in which the urban populations have been and are 
persistently sacrificed for electioneering reasons. 
The exemption could not have been carried without 
the support of Radicals, for the Radicals and Social- 
ists together had a majority in the Chamber which 
agreed to it. The Radical Party is now almost 
entirely a " country party," dependent on the rural 
districts and small towns. The large towns have 
been captured by the Socialists. The exemption of 
nearly half the population of France has, of course, 
enormously diminished the yield of the income tax, 
which, moreover, is not properly applied except to 
the salaried classes, whose incomes can be easily 
ascertained. The declarations of the rich are ac- 
cepted without question. The whole working of the 



140 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

French financial and administrative system tends to 
favour the rich at the expense of the poor to an 
even greater extent than in most other countries. 
France is the paradise of the rentier — the man 
Hving on unearned income derived from rent or in- 
terest; and the Radicals, the most advanced poli- 
ticians of the bourgeoisie, have done nothing to 
alter this. 

One of the reasons of the decadence of the Radical 
Party is that it has never had the courage to be 
in opposition. It has always compromised 
rather than lose any of its members. Individual 
Radicals take office without consulting the party or 
even in defiance of its decisions and the party 
tolerates their conduct. In the' present Chamber the 
Radicals, the Socialists and the " Socialist Repub- 
licans," who are merely Radicals under another 
name, have together a clear majority. After M. 
Painleve's resignation in November 1917, they all 
decided, rightly or wrongly, to refuse their co- 
operation or support to a Ministry presided over by 
M. Clemenceau. Nevertheless, when M. Clemen- 
ceau formed his Cabinet, Radicals and Independent 
Socialists accepted office in it and their respective 
groups acquiesced in their indiscipline. Political 
parties that act m this way stultify themselves ; 
in fact since that date the Radical Party has fallen 
into a state of abject servility and is now completely 
discredited. Had the party had the courage to 
enforce party discipline, to decide as a party 
whether or not it would participate in a particular 
Ministry and to expel any of its mem.bers that 
joined a Ministry without its permission, it might 
now be reduced in numbers, but it would not be 
reduced to impotence. 

Nothing has done more to undermine the power 
of the bourgeoisie than the incompetence and 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 141 

helplessness of the Radicals, which have convinced 
the proletariat that there is nothing to be hoped for 
from any bourgeois party. The failure of the Radi- 
cals has left the Socialist Party as the only effective 
political organisation of the Left. Although it is 
only one-sixth of the Chamber, whereas the Radical 
Party is nearly one-third, the Socialist Party has an 
influence out of all proportion to its numbers, due 
to the fact that it is the only organised political 
party in France, the only party that has any dis- 
cipline or any conception of corporate action. The 
very nature of a party does not seem to be gene- 
rally understood in France, where one often hears 
that it is intolerant to expel a man from a party 
even if he is continually speaking and voting against 
it. This shows a misapprehension of the nature and 
scope of tolerance. We ought to tolerate any 
opinion in the nation, since the alternative is to give 
those who hold certain opinions the choice between 
keeping silence and leaving the country, but the 
toleration of any opinion in a party is an absurdity. 
A party exists for the purpose of promoting certain 
opinions, and unless its members agree on all im- 
portant questions of principle it ceases to be a 
party. If a man be expelled from a party he can 
go on expressing his opinions outside it and suffers 
no injury. The Socialist Party seems to be the only 
one in France that recognises these truisms. In 
the midst of political chaos and incoherence it alone 
stands for something definite. 

The system of party government is often criti- 
cised in England and is no doubt open to criticism; 
but those who are inclined to condemn it altogether 
should first pause and look at France. There the 
absence of any party system has made personal 
considerations take precedence of political : that 
is one of the causes of the decadence of 



142 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

Parliament. No group ever has a majority in the 
Chamber, so that a homogeneous Ministry is im- 
possible/ Before the war Ministries had for fifteen 
years been composed of representatives of all the 
groups of the Left, except the Socialists, who refused 
to be included. This system, itself the result of 
the multiplicity of groups, led to their further mul- 
tiplication. The reason why there are so many 
groups is that a Deputy whose qualifications would 
never give him a chance of office if he belonged to 
a large party becomes " ministrable " by forming 
a small group and thus commanding a score of 
votes. But the Ministries are coalitions, not of 
groups, but of individuals. As in the Radical Party, 
so in the other groups. Deputies do not consult 
their colleagues as a rule before accepting an invi- 
tation to join a Ministry, or, if they consult them, 
do not follow their advice if it be unfavourable. 
When a Ministry resigns, half its members usually 
join its successor, and it is quite common for a 
defeated Prime Minister to be succeeded by one of 
his own colleagues. The possibilities for intrigue 
afforded by this system are obvious ; they are fully 
exploited. During the war only one Ministry — 
that of M. Painleve — was defeated in the Chamber ; 
the others were gradually undermined by sub- 
terranean intrigues against them conducted in the 
lobbies by some of their own members. Each suc- 
cessive 'Prime Minister during the war, except M. 
Clemenceau, had been a member of the preceding 
Cabinet. The "sacred union" or party truce 
during the war made things worse than ever by 

^ A homogeneous Administration would not be necessary, 
if Ministers were separately and individually responsible to Parlia- 
ment and Cabinet government were abolished. But so long 
as ministerial solidarity and Cabinet government exist serious 
differences of opinion in the Cabinet paralyse its action. 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 143 

increasing the number of Deputies eligible for office. 
When Ministries included Socialists, Deputies of 
the Centre and even of the Right, politics became 
merely a scramble for office and personal rivalries 
entirely took the place of political. So long 
as the majority of French parliamentarians 
remain unable to resist the temptation of a port- 
folio, French politics will remain in a state of 
incoherence. 

A terrible weakness of French parliamentarians — 
and it is not restricted to France — is the fear of 
responsibility. During the war the majority of the 
Deputies grumbled against every Government in 
the lobbies, but only once had the courage to vote 
against a Government in the Chamber. They com- 
plained that the President of the Republic chose 
Prime Ministers without regard to the wishes of the 
Chamber and accused him of exercising personal 
power, but they had only themselves to blame. 
Until November 1917 the President had no indica- 
tion of the wishes of the Chamber to guide him in 
the choice of a Prime Minister, and could but follow 
his own judgment ; and when, in November 1917, 
he did in fact appoint a Prime Minister in opposi- 
tion to the expressed wishes of a majority of the 
Chamber, the Chamber acquiesced in his choice. 
A Parliament which abdicates in this way has no 
right to complain if advantage be taken of its 
docility. There seems to be something demoralis- 
ing in the atmosphere of a Parliament M^hich pro- 
duces a lack of moral courage and a fear of responsi- 
bility. How often has one heard a Minister say 
that he was not responsible for a particular policy 
because he disapproved of it and was overruled by 
his colleagues ; it never seemed to have occurred to 
him that he could always have resigned and that 
he ought to have done so if the matter concerned 



144 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

was one of vital importance. Members of Parlia- 
ment are disposed to think too much of parliamen- 
tary combinations and parliamentary opinion and 
too little of the country ; they become entangled in 
the parliamentary machine. The French Chamber 
became, during the war, hopelessly out of touch 
with the country. On the other hand, it lived in 
terror of the " Great Press " — the big Parisian 
morning papers which never really represent French 
opinion, and did so less than ever during the war. 
By means of the censorship the Government of the 
day got the Press under its control and used it to 
intimidate Parliament; it was a system of govern- 
ment by the Press, perhaps the worst system of 
government that could be devised. The contempt 
into which the present Chamber has fallen through 
its cowardice has reacted on parliamentary institu- 
tions as such and enormously increased anti-par- 
liamentarism of both kinds. 

Another cause^ — perhaps the most important of 
all — of the decline of parliamentarism in France is 
the corruption which permeates politics. The 
French themselves exaggerate the extent of cor- 
ruption ; to hear most Frenchmen talk, one would 
imagine that there was not a single honest politi- 
cian — that every man of them had his price. But 
the French are disposed to attribute interested 
motives to everybody and to doubt the possibility 
of disinterested conduct — especially in the case of 
people of whose conduct they disapprove. They 
usually assume that their political opponents are 
paid by somebody or are making money somehow 
out of their nefarious political policy. Thus, M. 
Clemenceau was for several years believed by the 
great majority of the French people to be the paid 
agent of England simply because he did not share 
the Anglophobia which was then in fashion. So 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 145 

strong was this conviction, even in official quarters, 
that when M. Clemenceau visited England during 
the premiership of Waldeck-Rousseau, the latter 
had him followed everywhere by agents of the 
French Secret Police. A similar legend firmly 
believed by the majority of the bourgeoisie made 
Jaures a millionaire ; it was finally discredited only 
after his death, when it was found that he had left 
his family almost unprovided for, his total fortune 
amounting to £800 or £400. This tendency to im- 
pute interested motives indiscriminately has a 
certain affinity with the inclination to discover 
traitors everywhere. Its origin is perhaps partly a 
certain intolerance due to vanity, which makes 
people think that nobody can differ from them in 
good faith ; partly an inordinate respect for money, 
which leads to the belief that nobody can resist the 
temptation to acquire it. 

Although French politicians are less corrupt than 
many people in France represent them to be, 
although there are many whose motives are quite 
disinterested and whose conduct is perfectly clean, 
nevertheless there is too much corruption in France 
— more than there is in England. I am not so 
foolish as to suppose that English politics are free 
from corruption; they never have been and they 
have been less so than ever during the war. Nor 
must one ignore the fact that corruption, like 
everything else, is more open in France than in 
England. We are strongly averse from washing our 
dirty linen in public ; the French seem rather to like 
it than otherwise. Scandals are hushed up in Eng- 
land, they are exposed in France; for this reason 
England always appears better than it is and France 
worse. This applies to the whole of life : the French 
like to recognise facts ; we do not — that is what the 
French really mean when they call us hypocritical. 

L 



146 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

Yet, when all these considerations have been taken 
into account, it still remains true that corruption is 
particularly prevalent in France. Even the ex- 
posure of scandals does not check it, for French poli- 
ticians survive scandals which in England would 
put an end to their political career. I mean real 
scandals. Nobody in France regards the fact that a 
man has been divorced as a scandal, and the sug- 
gestion that it would make him unfit to sit in Par- 
liament would be received with universal derision. 
The French properly regard an incident of that kind 
as a private affair which does not concern anybody 
but the person himself. But there are men still 
occupying a prominent position in French politics 
in spite of the fact that they were implicated in the 
Panama affair or some other financial scandal of 
the same kind. The reason is simple : there is so 
profound and general a conviction in France that 
all politicians are corrupt that, when corruption 
is proved against an individual politician, it is taken 
almost as a matter of course ; it is just what people 
expected, and they simply shrug their shoulders. 
For the same reason, it often happens that a repu- 
tation for corruption is totally undeserved and that 
the politicians most generally suspected of having 
made money out af politics are precisely those 
whose careers have been perfectly clean. There is a 
certain French politician who, although he has never 
been Prime Minister and is not in the first rank, 
has been a member of several Ministries, who, for 
some unknown reason, is generally reputed to have 
made money out of politics throughout his career. 
He has that reputation even on his own side in poli- 
tics and the chances are that, if one asked for an 
example of a corrupt politician, his name would be 
the first given by nine out of every ten Frenchmen. 
Yet I am convinced that he is one of the most 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 147 

honest men in French pohtics and that his reputa- 
tion is wholly undeserved ; for, as one of his most 
intimate friends remarked to me, he lives in quite 
a modest way, spends very little money, and yet he 
never has a sou to spare. Such mistakes as these 
are the inevitable result of indiscriminating sus- 
picion; people that suspect everybody invariably 
become incapable of recognising an honest man 
when they see one, and end in being taken in by 
the rogues. That is very much the case of the 
French people in regard to their politicians; some 
of those in whom they have had the most confidence 
have deserved it the least. 

Love of money is one of the chief weaknesses of 
the French, at least of the bourgeois and the 
peasants, for the workmen on the whole are free 
from it ; it accounts, no doubt, in part for the preva- 
lence of corruption in its grosser and more obvious 
form — the fonder people are of money the more 
they will inevitably be tempted by it. But I do 
not think that this is the chief cause. There is more 
corruption in France than in England because 
there are more opportunities for it — it is the inevit- 
able result of the administrative and political sys- 
tem. Such a system would produce corruption in 
any country and among any people. The enormous 
amount of patronage which it puts in the hands of 
Ministers would lead to abuses anywhere. It causes 
the Government to be regarded prim.arily as a dis- 
penser of favours which are to be obtained by in- 
fluence and interest — by the use of a piston, as the 
slang phrase goes. The English Civil Service was 
corrupt a century ago when vacancies in it were 
filled by nomination ; it was the introduction of 
open competition that put an end to corruption. 
In France the system of nomination still exists and 
produces the results that it formerly produced in 

L 2 



/ 



/ 



148 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

England. Although French Civil servants are very 
badly paid, the majority of French bourgeois 
y parents prefer a post in the Civil Service for their 
sons to a trade or profession ; the great ambition of 
a large proportion of Frenchmen is to be a Govern- 
ment official. The number of Government officials 
is enormous : the Customs, the Octroi, the innumer- 
able forms of petty indirect taxation, some of 
which are hardly worth the expense of collection, 
help to make it so. French administration would 
be much more efficient if the number of Govern- 
ment officials were reduced by half and their 
salaries doubled, provided that open competition 
were substituted for nomination, but no Minister 
will ever propose a change which would reduce the 
number of places at his disposal. On the other 
hand, the really important public services are 
often understaffed ; that is the case of the postal 
service. 

The State monopolies add to the patronage at the 
disposal of Ministers ; there are appointments in 
tobacco and match factories, and there are above 
all the bureaux de tabac — the official tobacco 
shops, which have the monopoly of selling tobacco 
retail.^ Just as in England we are stupid 
enough to give away to individuals the right 
to sell drink and thus present them gratui- 
tously with a valuable monopoly, so in France the 
right to sell tobacco retail is conferred as a favour. 
Since no training or qualifications are required for 
it, it is eagerly sought after and gives the largest 
opportunity for abuse. The most cjmical Minister 
would not dare to give a post in a Government office 
to a totally illiterate person, but anybody is com- 
petent to run a tobacco shop ; the prices of all 
his stock are fixed for him in advance, and he has 

^ For the working of the State monopolies see Chapter VII. 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 149 

merely to hand over the counter the tobacco, 
cigars, or cigarettes asked for and take the money. 
Theoretically a tobacco shop is supposed to be a 
reward for services of some kind to the State, and 
in fact it is sometimes given to an incapacitated 
officer, non-commissioned officer or Government 
servant, or to his widow. But it would be far more 
profitable to the State to deal with such cases by 
adequate pensions and put up to auction the right 
to sell tobacco either for a term of years or for life ; 
since the number of tobacco shops is limited in 
proportion to the population, a large revenue would 
be obtained by that method. There is a certain 
tobacco shop in Paris which is sublet by its legal 
holder, who obtains for it a rent of about £3,000 
a year ; for there is nothing to prevent the holders 
of the agencies from farming them out, and those 
that consider it beneath their social position to run 
them themselves always take that course. It need 
hardly be said that in awarding tobacco shops 
Ministers put a very wide and generous interpreta- 
tion on the term " public services," which often 
mean political services to a particular Senator or 
Deputy or to the Minister himself, or even near 
relationship to one of his friends. In this regard 
the Third Republic has continued the traditions of 
the ancien regime ; the King was the fountain of 
honour and also of profit, and so is the Govern- 
ment of the Third Republic. It is true that the 
Ministers of the Republic cannot confer titles, but 
they have plenty of decorations to give away, and 
I am not sure that a decoration in France does not 
give more pleasure to its recipient than a title in 
England. Certainly decorations are even more 
sought after in France than titles in England, for 
there are more of them, and the number of people 
fhat can hope to get one is much larger ; that is one 



150 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

of the advantages of democracy. It must be 
remembered that the holder of a French decoration 
has the right to wear in his buttonhole a ribbon or 
rosette indicating that he possesses it. This prob- 
ably gives a more constant satisfaction than the 
possession of a title, for if a man enters a restaurant 
or a railway carriage no stranger knows whether 
he is a peer or a commoner, whereas, if he should 
happen to be an officer of the Legion of Honour, 
everybody in the place knows it by his red rosette. 
This is no doubt the reason why so much 
energy and even intrigue are devoted to pro- 
curing such humble decorations as the Palmes 
Academiques, the Merite Agricole, or the Dragon of 
Annam ; the subject is a perennial one for the 
French humorists. 

Since Ministers are but mortals, nepotism and 
favouritism are the natural results of a system in 
which everything goes by favour and the French 
administration becomes a vast engine of corruption. 
Places are given, to please friends or conciliate 
enemies, to reward political supporters or win over 
political opponents, to recompense personal services 
or to get rid of importunate suitors. An unfortunate 
Minister, pestered with applications of every kind 
from every side, will sometimes yield to importunity 
what he might refuse to the claims of friendship. 
For the requests that pour in on him are not all ap- 
plications for appointments. Every morning his 
secretaries have to wade through a mass of corre- 
spondence asking for favours of every description — 
usually more or less illegal : for a hint to the conseil 
de revision (recruiting tribunal) that a particular 
young gentleman is inapt for military service, for 
a hint to the Public Prosecutor or a juge dHnstruc- 
tion that the case against a particular person has 
nothing in it, for exemption from this, that, or the 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 151 

other legal obligation. There are not many things 
that influential connections cannot do in France ; 
when the French say of a man " il a de belles 
relations," one knows that he is more likely to get 
on than if he were merely able or industrious. The 
French judicial system is mediaeval : the French 
system of administration is almost oriental in the 
arbitrary powers that it gives to Ministers and the 
way in which influence counts. It is a common- 
place in France that laws are never permanently 
enforced. That is an exaggerated statement, like 
many others that the French make about them- 
selves, but it is partially true ; as a French writer 
once said, there are too many laws in France for 
there to be any law. Since most laws are bad in 
all countries, the failure to enforce them has some- 
times its advantages ; but, unfortunately, in prac- 
tice it is usually only influential people who escape 
the law, which is enforced against those who have 
no influence. 

What, after all, is an unfortunate Minister to do 
with all the patronage at his disposal r With the 
best intentions in the world he could not possibly 
find the most suitable person for every appointment 
that he has to make : how, for instance, can he 
possibly decide between the various candidates for 
a tobacco agency in a remote provincial town ? 
He must depend on recommendations, and very 
naturally, as any one of us would in the same cir- 
cumstances, he prefers the recommendations of 
people that he knows. It is equally natural that 
he should be ready to give a particularly favourable 
hearing to his parliamentary colleagues and sup- 
porters. So it comes about that one of the chief 
functions of a French Senator or Deputy is to be 
the channel through which Ministerial favours flow, 
and one of his chief preoccupations is to secure a 



152 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

fair share of those favours for his own constituents. 
The amount of correspondence with which a French 
Deputy has to deal is incredible. Every day he 
receives a huge batch of letters from constituents 
asking for some service and his re-election may de- 
pend on the way in which he answers them. Nor are 
his constituents content with writing : if the impor- 
tance of the matter warrants it, or even if it does 
not, supposing that the constituency is in Paris or 
within an easy distance, they call upon him at the 
Chamber. Much of a Deputy's time is taken up in 
answering letters or receiving visits ; some Deputies 
refuse to do either, but the refusal may easily cost 
them their seats. If a Deputy has also a profession 
or a business, he has very little time left for his 
real parliamentary duties ; that is, perhaps, one of 
the reasons why the Chamber often does not give to 
important matters the serious attention that they 
deserve. It must not be supposed that all Depu- 
ties like this system ; on the contrary, it is probable 
that the majority of them would be glad to be 
relieved from the burden of satisfying the demands 
for places and favours, and I have known men who 
have abandoned political life in disgust at it. After 
all, the task is an ungrateful one ; for every person 
that a Deputy satisfies by getting him a place he 
offends fifty who wanted it and did not get it. The 
system vitiates the whole political atmosphere; 
electors often vote for a Deputy less for his political 
principles and programme than for what they hope 
to get out of him through his relations with those 
in power. It is a high tribute to the independence 
and public spirit of the French proletariat that the 
Socialists, who are, of course, the worst possible 
Deputies to get anything out of, have so large a 
representation in the Chamber. It is naturally in 
the rural districts, where the Deputies come into 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 153 

much closer individual contact with their constitu- 
ents, that self-interest enters most into an election. 
To the Deputies themselves the system that makes 
them channels for the distribution of favours is 
demoralising. They know that their re-election 
depends more on the favours that they can obtain 
for their constituents than on their action in Par- 
liament — that a liberal distribution of places and 
decorations covers a multitude of political sins. 
Nor is it only individual favours that they can 
obtain for their constituents. The powerlessness of 
the local authorities and the necessity of obtaining 
the authorisation of the Government for every local 
improvement gives further opportunities for the 
exercise of the Deputy's influence. A rural district 
has often had to wait for years for a new bridge 
or a new road that was badly needed merely because 
its Deputy was unfavourably regarded by the 
Government. On the principle of " do ut des," the 
Government uses the favours which it grants to 
Senators and Deputies as a means of bringing 
pressure on them ; to oppose the Government is to 
lose one's chance of being useful to one's con- 
stituency and therefore to damage one's chance of 
re-election. One means of influencing members of 
Parliament is fortunately forbidden by law : it is 
illegal for a Senator or Deputy to be given a decora- 
tion. But this prohibition was suspended by 
Parliament early in the war on the pretext of 
decorating Deputies on active service for their 
military exploits. Immediately a shower of decora- 
tions descended on the Chamber, and every 
Deputy that had served in a provincial Intendance 
or found the slightest excuse for putting on a 
uniform appeared with the Legion of Honour in 
his buttonhole, provided, of course, that he was a 
faithful supporter of the Government. 



154 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

There are, however, corrupting and demoralising 
influences in Parliament even more important than 
those that have been mentioned, and even more 
serious in their effects. They are not peculiar to 
France, for they are the necessary outcome of ex- 
isting social conditions, but they are perhaps more 
obvious in France than elsewhere. The Socialist 
workman who doubts whether Socialism will ever 
triumph by Parliamentary methods has one cogent 
and, to my mind, almost unanswerable argument : 
the effect of a capitalist Parliament on its members, 
and in particular on Socialist and Labour represen- 
tatives. Intense bitterness has been caused in the 
French proletariat by the way in which certain 
politicians of great ability have used Socialism as 
a ladder by which to climb into eminence, only 
to kick it down when it has served its purpose. 
From the point of view of self-interest it is an 
obvious disadvantage to an able man to be a 
Socialist, for it means that he can never hope to 
hold office and that the prizes of politics are denied 
to him. All men are not so disinterested as Jaures, 
who would have been Prime Minister of France 
years before his death had he remained what lie 
was at the beginning of his career— a Republican 
of the Left Centre— or even if his evolution towards 
the Left had stopped short at Radicalism. 
M. Millerand, M. Briand, and M. Viviani were all 
Socialists and all abandoned Socialism to become 
Ministers. M. Briand had been in Parliament only 
four years when he became Minister of Public In- 
struction and Public Worship in M. Clemenceau's 
first Cabinet, and he was suppressing a railway 
strike amid the applause of all the capitalists and 
reactionaries in France only five or six years after 
his violent advocacy of the general strike as a revo- 
lutionary method. I cannot assert that MM. 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 155 

Millerand, Briand, and Viviani were insincere or 
influenced solely by self-interest — that is a matter 
for their own consciences — but undoubtedly a con- 
version that is profitable to the convert is open to 
grave suspicion; the presumption in such a case 
is on the side of insincerity, just as it is on the side 
of sincerity when the convert loses, or at least does 
not gain, by his conversion. There can be no 
doubt that every French Socialist politician that 
has abandoned Socialism has profited by the change 
exceedingly, both financially and otherwise. These 
desertions have perhaps done as much as any- 
thing to promote anti-parliamentarism among the 
French proletariat. But such cases are happily in 
a minority; on the majority the demoralising in- 
fluence of the parliamentary environment is mord 
subtle and less obvious. 

A large proportion — indeed the majority — of 
French Deputies are men in a very modest financial 
position — country lawyers, country doctors, veteri- 
nary surgeons, and so on. When they are elected 
they come up from their province to Paris and find 
themselves with an income of £600 a year. It is not 
a large income, especially in Paris, but it is often 
larger than they have ever had before, and its 
possibilities seem to a man accustomed to the 
simple life and modest expenditure of a country 
town much greater than they actually are. If the 
newly-elected Deputy is married, he sometimes 
leaves his wife behind in order to reduce expenses, 
and for a time Madame Durand enjoys the new 
sensation of shining among her friends and acquain- 
tances as Madame la Depute. But sooner or later 
she hankers after Paris ; when that happens she 
naturally gets her way in accordance with the 
ancient privilege of her sex. Once in Paris she is 
only too likely to develop social ambitions, and 



156 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

social ambitions cost money. She is invited to 
receptions at Ministries and the Elysee and 
perhaps at an Embassy or two, and she naturally 
wants to be as well dressed as the Parisian women 
whom she meets there. She probably does not 
succeed in that ambition, for it is very difficult to 
be as well dressed as a Parisian woman, but it costs 
just as much money as if she did succeed. The 
Deputy, for his part, becomes accustomed to the 
life of Paris, acquires perhaps a taste for good 
dinners in more or less expensive restaurants, mixes 
in the society of men that spend a good deal of 
money, and in general becomes a very different 
person in his habits and tastes from what he was 
before. He may even think it necessary or desir- 
able to acquire a " petite amie," " just like a 
reactionary," as the Radical Deputy says in " Le 
Hoi," and that may turn out to be a very expensive 
luxury, especially if the lady professes to love him 
for himself. With all this an income of £600 a 
year in Paris soon becomes inadequate, and, 
besides, the income is precarious; it depends on 
securing re-election and is guaranteed for only four 
years. The prospect of being possibly obliged to 
return to a very modest situation in a country town 
or village is not pleasing when one has become 
accustomed to the life of Paris. So the Deputy 
sees that he must make money — a Deputy can 
always make money, and by means in themselves 
perfectly legitimate according to all ordinary 
standards. Direct and vulgar bribery is compara- 
tively rare ; there are, of course, Deputies that 
accept a sum of money or some other direct bribe 
for promoting in Parliament the interests of an 
individual corporation by supporting or opposing a 
particular measure or in some other way, but such 
cases are exceptional. As a rule, the financial 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 157 

interests proceed more cautiously and indirectly. 
A barrister is offered briefs or the position of stand- 
ing counsel to some great financial or industrial 
company. Of course, no conditions are attached to 
the offer — that would be a very clumsy way of going 
about the matter — but, if a measure affecting the 
company's interest happens to come before the 
Chamber, it is probable that the Deputy in ques- 
tion will act in accordance with those interests, and, 
if he be an influential man, his action may be very 
effective. There are all sorts of ways in which a 
Deputy may be useful to a commercial concern ; it 
may be a question of obtaining a concession or 
some other favour from the Government. A 
Deputy that is not a barrister may be put on a 
board of directors or otherwise interested in a per- 
fectly honourable way. A journalist — and there 
are many journalists in the Chamber — may be given 
a good appointment on a big Parisian paper, or 
capital may be found for him to start a paper for 
himself. The financial interests have innumerable 
methods of getting Deputies under their influence, 
and they use them all. The Panama affair was not 
exceptional; it differed from many others of the 
same kind only in its magnitude and in the con- 
sequent publicity given to it. An investigation of 
some of the others would give interesting results. 
We do not yet know, for instance, all the connec- 
tions in Parliament and the Press of the N'Goko 
Sanga enterprise, although we know that a leading 
member of the staff of a great Parisian paper, who 
is now in a still more prominent position, was con- 
siderably interested in it. The temptation to make 
money directly or indirectly out of politics is very 
great, and it is not surprising that many politicians 
succumb to it, since most of the means appear 
quite consistent with honourable conduct. It is 



158 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

probable that many politicians, when they take the 
first step, do not realise in what a coil they are 
involving themselves. Of course there are means 
of making money in politics, other than that of 
accepting bribes, which nobody would call legiti- 
mate. One has heard of Ministers who gambled on 
the Stock Exchange on their official information, 
and there is a lady in Paris who has, rightly or 
wrongly, the reputation of acting as intermediary 
in these little transactions. What is certain in any 
case is that there have been and are too many 
men in French politics who, when they leave 
political life, are much richer than they were when 
they entered it. 

I confess that I see no remedy for this evil, which 
is the inevitable result of capitalist conditions. It 
has been proposed to make it illegal for members 
of Parliament to be directors of companies and even 
to follow certain occupations ; that might diminish 
the evil, it would not do away with it. So long as 
the financial and capitalist interest exists it will 
find ways of influencing politicians. Certainly 
some of the more open abuses might be suppressed 
in the interest of public decency; it is scandalous 
that a Cabinet Minister should be allowed to hold 
large interests in concerns dealing with the State. 
But such measures would only be palliatives. High 
Finance has France in its grip; it is the power 
behind the Throne, ubiquitous and omnipotent; 
and, although it is stronger in France than else- 
where, for reasons that have been mentioned,^ it 
is a pernicious influence in every country. The 
whole development of the modern capitalist system 
tends to increase the power of finance, and there is 
only one way of escape from the domination of the 
financial interests — Socialism. Democracy is not 
* See page 72. 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 159 

the cause of corruption ; it has not yet been realised 
even in the countries called democratic, least of all 
in France. It is not a question of regime : the 
Third Republic is no more corrupt than the regimes 
that preceded it, and if corruption has extended its 
scope to some degree, that is the result of the 
increased power of Finance and has nothing to do 
with political conditions. It is idle to tell the 
workmen that they can get all they want if they 
choose to capture Parliament ; they know very well 
that it is not true, since Parliament will always 
be captured by the financial interests. That 
is the reason of the anti-parliamentarism of 
the Russian revolution, which our Press calls 
undemocratic because it is trying to make 
democracy possible. 

In France, as I have said, there are many mem- 
bers of Parliament that have never made, and never 
will make, a penny out of politics directly or 
indirectly. That is true of the great majority of 
the Socialist Deputies; by common consent the 
Socialist Party is recognised as the cleanest party in 
French politics. The Socialist Deputies are drawn 
from all classes of society — the bourgeoisie, the 
peasantry, and the proletariat — and the reason 
why they compare so favourably as a whole with 
the other parties is no doubt that on the one hand 
they have definite principles, and on the other they 
cannot join in the scramble for portfolios. When 
the Socialist Party was led by the war to depart 
from its rule of not participating in a bourgeois 
Ministry, the effects on the party were disastrous ; 
some of the Socialist Deputies have now ceased to 
be Socialists in anything but name. But happily 
the party has returned to its principles, and the 
Social-Patriots, if they are re-elected at all, 
will not be re-elected by Socialist votes. But, 



160 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

although the Socialist Party is exceptionally free 
from corruption, although the Deputies of pro- 
letarian origin are as a body less amenable to 
corrupting influences than the bourgeois, neverthe- 
less all alike undergo to some extent the 
demoralising influence of Parliament. A workman 
that becomes a Deputy sooner or later becomes a 
bourgeois and out of touch with his own class. At 
present the French Socialist Deputies as a whole 
are painfully out of touch with the rank and file of 
the party — the war is partly responsible for the 
fact, which intensifies the discredit of Parliament. 
Whenever the social revolution comes in France, it 
will not be a parliamentary revolution ; it will take 
the form that it is taking in all the European 
countries where it has come already, with such 
modifications as would naturally arise from French 
conditions. By timely reforms the parliamentary 
system might have been saved, but the bourgeoisie, 
which has ruled France during the nineteenth 
century, has been as blind and conservative as 
was the noblesse in the eighteenth century, and is 
likely to pay the same penalty. It seems at last 
disposecl to make concessions — the Government of 
M. Clemenceau introduced a legal eight-hour day — 
but it is probable that these concessions made at 
the eleventh hour will produce the same effect as 
the concessions of Louis XVI. I am disposed to 
think, as I have already said, that it is too late to 
save the parliamentary system or the present 
regime ; France is at the cross-roads — one leads to 
revolution and the other to reaction, and nobody 
can yet say which she will take. 

If she chooses the path that leads to revolution, 
the reactionaries will have a large responsibility for 
the choice. It has been said that France is the 
country of revivals and reconstitutions ; that is only 



DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 161 

another way of saying that she is the country of 
reactions, or has been in the past. That has been 
one of the greatest weaknesses of France since the 
Revolution — that nothing seems to have been 
definitely acquired; French history during the 
nineteenth century was a series of reactions. In 
England reforms are often violently opposed, but 
when they are once passed even the great majority 
of their opponents accept them. That is to say, there 
are no reactionaries in the true sense of the term 
in England, or they are a negligible quantity — 
there is the Morning Post, of course, but its re- 
actionary opinions are purely literary and it is so 
amusing that one would be sorry to lose it. In 
France there is an organised political party — the 
Action Frangaise — which proposes to return to the 
ancien regime ; a parallel would be a serious 
Jacobite party in England. It is true that the 
Action Frangaise is a small minority, that it has no 
following in the peasantry or the proletariat, but 
it is a considerable force in the bourgeoisie, it has 
plenty of money at its disposal, and each successive 
Government during the war has thought it worth 
while to conciliate it. It played a large part in 
bringing M. Clemenceau into power and in keeping 
him there. When M. Painleve was Prime Minister 
in 1917, clear evidence was obtained of seditious 
action in the army on the part of the Action 
Frangaise, and M. Painleve was induced by 
M. Poincare to refrain from prosecuting. I men- 
tion these facts to show that the Action Frangaise, 
absurd as its programme seems, is not at all a 
negligible quantity ; there is actually a considerable 
number of people in France that want to go back 
to the political, social, and economic conditions of 
the eighteenth century. Although the Third 
Republic has existed for nearly half a century, it is 

M 



162 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

not yet accepted by the whole of the French people. 
Mr. Chesterton, if I am not mistaken, has suggested 
somewhere that the reason of this is that the 
Republic is a party, but, if that be true, it is only 
because the Republic has not been universally 
accepted — ^Mr. Chesterton has mistaken an effect 
for a cause. In the same sense, every preceding 
regime since the Revolution has been a party, for 
the form of government has been constantly in dis- 
pute. So long as there is in any country a body of 
men that refuse to accept the existing form of 
government, the supporters of the regime must 
defend it against them. In fact the Third Republic 
has been far more tolerant of the Royalists than was 
the British Government of the Jacobites, so long as 
the latter were an effective force, and I doubt very 
much whether in England at this moment a party 
whose avowed object it was to overthrow the 
Monarchy, by force if necessary, would be allowed 
openly to preach and even to organise sedition as 
the Action Frangaise is. 

These sterile controversies about the form of 
government have been a great hindrance to pro- 
gress in France and have seriously handicapped the 
country in every way. It is only just to say that 
they are to some degree responsible for the barren 
record of the Third Republic in regard to reforms. 
The Boulangist movement and the Dreyfus affair 
forced Republicans for years to be on their defence ; 
the task of saving what was acquired absorbed all 
their energies and prevented them from under- 
taking reforms. That is what I mean by saying 
that, if revolution comes, the reactionaries will have 
a large responsibility for it. They have indeed 
helped to discredit the present regime, but it is at 
least possible that it is not they who will benefit by 
the discredit. On the contrary, they may be the 



' DISCREDIT OF PARLIAMENT 163 

greatest sufferers, for they all belong to the 
capitalist class, and in that case they will deserve 
no pity. The excessive preoccupation of the 
French with forms of government is no doubt 
partly a result of Etatisme — of the tendency to 
regard the State as an omnipotent Providence dis- 
pensing good and evil. The Government is held 
responsible for everything, it " fills the butchers' 
shops with big blue flies," or clears them of flies, 
as the case may be. When things go well, the 
Government of the day or the regime is praised 
without discrimination ; it is blamed with equal lack 
of discrimination when things go badly. So the 
Neapolitan fisherman puts flowers and candles 
before the image of his favourite saint when the 
haul is good and beats the image or puts it in the 
well when the haul is bad. It is probable that the 
French Government is often no more responsible 
than the saint for vicissitudes of fortune. 

These, I believe, are the main factors in the 
present unrest in France and in the discredit into 
which parliamentary institutions and the bourgeois 
republican regime have fallen. Some of them are 
a legacy from the Revolution, as I shall try to show 
in the next chapter. 



M 2 



CHAPTER V 

RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION 

" Since the Temps does me the honour of attaching some 
importance to my opinion, I hasten to inform it, without hoping 
that my avowal will disarm it, that I remain the fierce enemy of 
the Constitution of the year VIII, so carefully preserved by all 
my friends that have been in power during the last thirty years. 
Not only do I stand firm for decentralisation, but my ideal of 
government is Federalism, so far am I from meriting the reproach 
of Jacobinism which the Temps hurls at random at all that are 
not of its sect. The ancient division into provinces, which was 
the product of history, was destroyed by the Revolution in a 
moment of anger in order to break the resistance to the new order 
of the combined forces of the old. It came about that in hasten- 
ing the realisation of their system of autoritaire liberation the 
Jacobins, to use the term employed by the Temps, cliiefly 
succeeded in forging the instruments of Napoleonic despotism. 
Nevertheless the institutions of 1793 were remarkably liberal 
in comparison with those of the year VIII. Since then we have 
proclaimed the Republic, but we have not made it." — Georges 
Clembnceatj {UAurore, July 31, 1903.) 

The French Revolution of the eighteenth century 
had a greater influence on the civihsed world than 
any movement since the Renaissance, the influence 
of which was perhaps less permanent than that of 
the Revolution, for it was unhappily arrested by 
the Reformation and the consequent counter- 
reformation. The effects of the Revolution ex- 
tended far beyond the borders of France; no 
civilised country was unaffected by it. Indeed, it 
transformed the world : to it we owe our habits of 

164 



RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION 165 

thought, our ideas of humanitarianism, tolerance, 
and freedom — all, in fact, that makes the modern 
world what it is on the intellectual side. If France 
had never achieved anything but the Revolution 
the world would owe her a debt of gratitude which 
can never be r;epaid. The service that France 
rendered to the world was rendered at a terrible 
cost to herself. Nevertheless the Revolution made 
in France profound changes for the better — politi- 
cal, social, and economic — which the series of 
reactions which succeeded it were unable to 
obliterate, although they seriously impaired many 
of them. France has not yet regained all that she 
lost during the nineteenth century of what the 
Revolution had given her. The intellectual France 
of the eighteenth century was, on the whole, wider 
and more generous in its sympathies than the 
France of the nineteenth century — certainly, though 
intensely French, more international, even 
cosmopolitan. " The France of Voltaire and of 
Montesquieu — that is the great, the true France," 
said Anatole France in London in December 1913. 
That France survived in the nineteenth century in 
individuals and even in parties, but it was not the 
dominant France, which became in most respects 
one of the most conservative countries of the 
civilised world. The reactions of the nineteenth 
century were, of course, the consequences of the 
mistakes and extravagances of the Revolution, but 
those mistakes and extravagances were themselves 
almost entirely the result of external interference 
with the Revolution. The Holy Alliance was chiefly 
responsible for all that was bad in the Revolution, 
for the sufferings which it brought on France, and 
for the reactions which unsettled the country and 
hindered its progress during the nineteenth century. 
Nc Englishman can remember without shame the 



166 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

part that England, in spite of the generous and 
far-seeing statesmanship of Charles James Fox, 
played in the infamous attack on the French Revo- 
lution ; has any rhetoric been quite so mischievous 
as that of Burke ? We paid for our criminal folly 
by twenty years of war to rid the world of the 
Napoleonic menace which we ourselves had created. 
Had the Revolution been left alone, there would 
have been no Reign of Terror, its development 
would have been quite other than it was, France 
would never have become an aggressive military 
Power, and French history of the nineteenth 
century would have been very different from what 
it has been. The perversion of the Revolution 
by the monarchies of Europe aided by renegade 
French aristocrats is one of the greatest tragedies 
of history. It is only a very poor consolation that 
the whole of Europe has suffered for it — for most 
of the European wars during the nineteenth century 
can ultimately be traced to the policy of the Holy 
Alliance — and that the French noblesse has paid 
for its base egotism and treachery by political anni- 
hilation. It should never be forgotten that many 
of the mistakes of France during the nineteenth 
century, many of her existing weaknesses, are the 
result of the persecution to which she was subjected 
and which checked and perverted her normal 
development. 

Why, for instance, did the Revolution, which 
began with international aspirations and enthusiasm 
for the brotherhood of man, end in a narrow and 
exclusive Nationalism and in aggressive militarism 
which made France a danger to Europe ? Chiefly 
because of foreign interference. It is true that 
there were two main intellectual influences in the 
devolution — that of Voltaire and that of Jean- 
Jacques Rousseau; the former was the rationalist 



RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION 167 

influence, the latter the religious. The Jacobins 
were true disciples of Jean-Jacques. The most dis- 
cerning picture in literature of the Jacobin character 
is that given by Anatole France in ' ' Les Dieux ont 
soif." The Jacobin was not at all the bloodthirsty- 
ruffian that he is usually represented to have been ; 
he was as a rule a person of austere life, rigid 
morality, and intense religious fervour, whose aim 
was to make everybody good and moral — the very 
type of the religious fanatic. His counterpart in 
history is the inquisitor who burned people to save 
their souls and to protect others from error; both 
were animated with the best possible intentions. 
The great fault of the Jacobin was that he was too 
moral. Robespierre was a Puritan and, like the 
Puritans of the seventeenth century, tried to enforce 
his own ideas of religion and morality. He guillo- 
tined atheists and prostitutes as well as aristocrats, 
and regarded disbelief in God as a mark of a bad 
citizen. The Jacobins, in fact, were inverted 
Catholics, whose intolerance was the logical out- 
come of their belief in authority. But it may be 
doubted whether they would ever have come to the 
top but for the fear of foreign invasion. Fear was 
the cause of the Terror, which was intelligible in 
the circumstances. France stood alone, with all 
the Great Powers of Europe against her; the 
heroism of the armies of the Republic, ill-equipped 
and undisciplined, had almost by a miracle repelled 
the invaders, but the danger was great. And 
Frenchmen were in the pay of the enemy, working 
against France abroad and spying at home. It is 
not surprising that every aristocrat was presumed 
to be a traitor. Have we not seen the same spirit 
manifest itself with much less excuse during the 
recent war in everv belligerent country ? If " Pro- 
Germans " and " Pacifists " have not been guillo- 



168 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

tined in England, that is not the fault of the public ; 
they have been tarred and feathered in the United 
States. Patriotism and fear produce much the 
same results in the twentieth as in the eighteenth 
century. 

The rise of Napoleon, the French wars of con- 
quest, the aggressive military spirit which laid hold 
of the French people, had as their sole cause the 
foreign attacks on the Revolution. No war in 
history was ever so purely defensive as was the war 
of the Revolution on the part of France, but, like 
all defensive wars, it degenerated into a war of 
aggression. I do not think that there is an example 
in history of a nation which, having been forced to 
go to war in self-defence, has been content to stop 
at self-defence and to end the war w^hen it had 
repelled the attack. Having once tasted blood, it has 
always become aggressive in its turn and wanted to 
continue until it had completely crushed its enemy. 
And the chances are that victory creates a desire 
for further conquests ; no nation has ever yet ab- 
stained from abusing a victory or prevented the 
wine of victory from going to its head. Unf or- 
nately, the Jacobin spirit did not die with 
Robespierre, nor did French militarism perish with 
Napoleon. Both have had a deplorable influence on 
France during the nineteenth century, and the per- 
sistence of militarism, at any rate, was again the 
fault of the Holy Alliance. Had we left the French 
people to deal with Napoleon after Waterloo, he 
might have fared ill at their hands. If he had not 
lost his throne he would have been obliged to make 
great concessions; France would, sooner or later, 
have returned to the Republic, and it would 
probably have lasted to this day. But we forced 
on France in 1815 a Royal family that she had 
repudiated and a form of government that she de- 



RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION 169 

tested. We made a martyr of the discredited Em- 
peror and by prolonging the Napoleonic legend 
ultimately led to the Second Empire, which, by its 
cheap imitation of Napoleon's aggressive policy, 
brought France to Sedan. It is to a great extent 
our fault — the fault of England, Prussia, Austria, 
and Russia — that France remained during the nine- 
teenth century, except under the Monarchy of July, 
a Chauvinist and aggressive Power, that she was 
distracted and retarded by successive reactions and 
changes of regime. And when at last, thanks to 
the secularisation of the schools and to the influence 
of Socialism, and of Jaures in particular, the 
Chauvinists were defeated at the end of the nine- 
teenth century, Russia and England worked 
together only too successfully to give them back 
their influence. Since 1899 the French reaction- 
aries, powerless to act openly, have influenced the 
foreign and even the internal policy of France 
through the intermediary of the Government of the 
Tsar, and since 1904 the British Foreign Office has 
consistently backed the French politicians that pro- 
moted a Chauvinist and bellicose policy and opposed 
the others. M. Delcasse, who nearly dragged 
France and Europe into war in 1905, was the hero of 
the British Foreign Office and of most of the British 
Press and the faithful servant of Edward VII. 
M. Rouvier and M. Caillaux, who saved France and 
Europe from war, were pursued with undying 
hatred as enemies of England. Certainly the 
French people is to blame for having allowed 
its rulers to keep it in ignorance of the 
obligations to which they had committed 
it and for having disinterested itself in 
foreign affairs, but it is none the less true 
that it has been cruelly deceived and that the 
misfortunes of France since the Revolution have 



170 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

been principally due to foreign interference and 
foreign control of French policy. 

Nevertheless, the Revolution made mistakes 
which were not due to foreign interference, but 
rather to the affection of the Revolutionaries, and 
of the Jacobins in particular, for theories deduced 
by the a priori method from first principles, which 
they rigidly applied without considering whether 
the conditions were suitable. The Declaration of 
the Rights of Man is itself an example of this 
method. Its very first statement — that all men are 
born free and equal — is evidently untrue, and many 
of the other assertions which it puts forth as self- 
evident truths are far from being indisputable; its 
authors were unable to rid themselves of the passion 
for dogma. The chief causes of the Revolution, as of 
all other great movements in history, were economic, 
but it was a political rather than a social revolu- 
tion. It did nothing for the proletariat, to whom 
its success was in a large measure due, and the 
attempt of a few men to probe economic evils to 
their roots was promptly suppressed. The French 
Revolution was essentially a bourgeois revolution. 
Holding as they did that the right of private pro- 
perty was sacred and inviolate, the Revolutionaries 
aimed at extending it to as many people as possible 
— at creating the largest possible number of 
bourgeois — but, as it is impossible for everybody to 
have private property, the case of the propertyless 
becam_e worse than ever, and the Revolution, in 
fact, helped the development of modern industrial 
capitalism. In so far as it was a social revolu- 
tion it merely substituted the bourgeoisie for the 
noblesse as the governing class. From the Revolu- 
tion issued the grand hour^eoh. families, whose 
fortunes originated for the most part in the pur- 
chase of hiens nationaiK*^ (confiscated ecclesiastic 



RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION 171 

property), many of whom forgot their origins and 
became pillars of reaction. Some obtained titles 
from Louis-Philippe, Napoleon III, or even the 
Pope. One of the leading Royalist Senators at the 
present moment is a gentleman the founder of 
whose family had a special taste for desecrating 
churches and acquired a considerable fortune by 
plundering chateaux and by fortunate purchases of 
ecclesiastical property which his pious Catholic 
descendant still enjoys. When the latter enter- 
tains at his chateau in the Vendee the 
neighbouring families of the old noblesse, most of 
them recognise their own arms on the silver used 
at table. 

The great economic change effected by the Revo- 
lution was, of course, in regard to land tenure. It 
gave prosperity to the peasants, who became the 
owners of the land that they tilled, and the law 
obliging an owner of land to divide it equally 
among his children at his death has prevented land 
from again becoming concentrated in the hands of a 
few individuals. That this system has its advan- 
tages nobody would deny — it was an immense 
advance on the land system of the old regime which 
still exists in England, and for a long time it 
worked well. But it has also, as we shall see, had 
great disadvantages, both material and moral, and 
modern conditions are rapidly making it impos- 
sible. It would be unreasonable to blame the 
Revolution for not having gone further than it did 
in the direction of economic change. The condi- 
tions in France at the end of the eig-hteenth century 
were not yet ripe for Socialism, if Karl Marx was 
right in thinking that industrial capitalism is a 
necessary stage in economic development. It is true 
that Russia is now trying the experiment of passing 
directly from feudalism to Socialism, but it remains 



172 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

to be seen whether the, experiment will succeed, 
and if it does, it will be because the Russians have 
behind them a century's experience of industrialism 
in other countries. At the end of the eighteenth 
century modern Socialism was still impossible; 
the French Revolution went as far as possible in 
the circumstances. Its work was necessarily in- 
complete and requires to be completed, but, what- 
ever its mistakes, it was the source and inspiration 
of all that is best in modern France. One has only 
to study the conditions of the old regime to realise 
how much injustice and oppression, how much 
misery and suffering, the Revolution swept away. 
If it did not thoroughly achieve Liberty, Equality, 
Fraternity, these three words still express the 
ideal of all Socialists and liberals and sum. up all 
their aims. 

The greatest mistake of the Revolution was a 
political one — the abolition of the old French pro- 
vinces and the centralisation of government and 
administration. The process of centralisation 
had already begun under Louis XIV, but it was 
carried much further by the Revolution, and 
Napoleon completed it, for it exactly suited his 
ideal of government ; a despotic ruler is always 
jealous of local liberties. The Jacobins, who were 
on the side of authority against liberty, were also 
naturally and logically partisans of centralisation, 
but there can be no doubt that it was the revolt of 
the Vendee that gave force to the ideal of " The 
Republic One and Indivisible " and led to the con- 
viction that that ideal could be realised only by 
suppressing all provincial autonomy. The cen- 
tralisers did their work thoroughly. They divided 
France into departments, mostly named after rivers 
or mountains, the areas of which were decided 
arbitrarily without regard to local interests or local 



RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION 173 

peculiarities. They deliberately fixed the boun- 
daries of the departments in such a way as to 
prevent them from coinciding with those of the 
ancient provinces ; for instance, the department of 
the Yonne is composed of a piece of Champagne 
and a piece of Burgundy. It would be impossible 
to restore the provinces without altering the boun- 
daries of some departments, for there is not a 
single group of departments which is exactly co- 
terminous with an ancient province. The aim was 
to stamp out all local differences and bring about 
uniformity throughout the whole of France. The 
attempt was, happily, a failure. As I have already 
said, legally and administratively the provinces no 
longer exist, but they still exist for all other pur- 
poses. A Frenchman may forget in what depart- 
ment he was born; he never forgets his native 
province. He is a Provengal, an Auvergnat, a 
Tourangeot, a Burgundian, a Breton, a Norman, a 
Fleming, or a Lorrainer before he is a Frenchman, 
and it makes all the difference in the world which 
he is, for the provincial characteristics and idiosyn- 
crasies are still as marked as ever and the provincial 
names represent different types and even different 
races. There is more difference, for instance, 
between a Provengal and a Lorrainer or a French 
Fleming than there is between either and the 
inhabitants of the adjoining foreign countries. 
Nature has been too strong for tlie centralisers. 
The meaningless departments, which represent 
nothing, exist only for legal and administrative 
purposes ; it never has been and never will be 
possible to galvanise them into real life or to force 
the people to accept them. Ask a Frenchman 
where he comes from and he will never reply 
" Seine-Inferieure " or " Haute-Marne " ; he will 
say " Normandy " or " Champagne." The village 



174 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

in which a Frenchmau is born is his " pays," 
and his real "patrie" is his province. 
The strongest patriotism in France is regional 
patriotism, because it is the only natural patriotism. 
It is older than the French Monarchy, it has sur- 
vived the Revolution and it will never be stamped 
out. 

Mystical patriotism — devotion to France con- 
ceived as a lady with a Greek profile wearing a 
helmet or a cap of Liberty, whose bust is to be 
found in every mairie — dates from the Revolution 
and was its creation. Allegiance to the sovereign 
took its place under the ancien regime; Joan 
d'Arc was inspired, not by devotion to France, but 
by loyalty to her liege lord, who so basely deserted 
her. Nobody before the Revolution would have 
talked of France, as M. Viviani does, as a "moral 
person "; the habit of personifying a nation, which 
has been so fruitful a source of misconceptions and 
false notions, is a modern vice. When the 
sovereign disappeared in France it was thought 
necessary to find a substitute for him to offer to 
popular worship and the " moral person " was in- 
vented. It is, I think, because regional patriotism 
is the natural patriotism for Frenchmen and the 
other is artificial that the latter has always taken 
the form of Chauvinism. For it is impossible to deny 
that Chauvinism is essentially French and is very 
difficult to distinguish from French patriotism, 
which is not a natural love of country but a sort of 
religious cult of an ideal France which ministers to 
national vanity. And Nationalism is itself a 
product of the Revolution, which was forced into 
it by attacks from without. The conquests of 
Napoleon naturally strengthened Nationalist and 
Chauvinist sentiment — they had exactly the same 
effect on France as had the victories over Austria, 



RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION 175 

Denmark, and France on Prussia later on. Had 
the Holy Alliance leit Napoleon alone and treated 
Ifrance justly, it is probable that the Chauvinist 
spirit would have died out, but, as always, the 
abuse of victory produced in the vanquished a desire 
for revenge, and it became the dream of the French 
to retrieve their losses. During the reigns of 
Louis XVIII, Charles X, and Louis-Philippe 
the democratic party was always clamouring for a 
spirited foreign policy, and Louis-Philippe's 
pacifism was one of the causes of his unpopularity. 
" They hate me because I am in favour of peace," 
he said to Victor Hugo. And he was right. 
Under Napoleon III France was an aggressive and 
bellicose nation. The defeat of 1871 would have 
been a wholesome lesson had the terms of peace 
been just and reasonable, but once more the victors 
abused their victory, with the inevitable result. 
Thus was Chauvinism nourished and kept alive in 
a naturally warlike people — for the French are 
and always have been born soldiers. When at last 
the great majority of the French people abandoned 
the " Revanche " and the Chauvinist party was 
defeated by the influences that have been men- 
tioned, the Chauvinist propaganda was driven 
under ground, so to speak, and having by sub- 
terranean methods, with help from outside France, 
undermined the forces of peace and Inter- 
nationalism, came out once more into the open in 
1912 and for two years made a campaign of provo- 
cation. Chauvinism triumphed in January 1913 
when M. Raymond Poincare was elected Presi- 
dent of the Republic by the votes of all the 
reactionaries and militarists in order to carry on a 
spirited foreign policy (" une politique fiere "). 
The triumph was facilitated by the curious in- 
sularity of the French, which had led them to 



ire MY SECOND COUNTRY 

concentrate all their attention on internal affairs 
and to be indifferent to foreign politics. M. Emile 
Combes, who is in many ways a typical Frenchman, 
is a striking example of that insularity. When he 
was Prime Minister he used at Cabinet Councils, 
when a question of foreign policy came up, to tell 
his Foreign Minister, M. Delcasse, to settle it with 
the President of the Republic (M. Loubet) ; he did 
not consider foreign affairs to be of sufficient im- 
portance to occupy the time of the Cabinet. Even 
Jaures, although from the first he recognised the 
danger of the Russian Alliance and of the Moroccan 
adventure, allowed himself to be immersed in the 
controversy about Proportional Representation at 
the critical moment when Chauvinism was again 
raising its head. 

One of the strongest reasons for believing that 
modern French patriotism is artificial and not 
natural to Frenchmen is the fact that so many great 
French writers have been anti-patriotic in the sense 
of being opposed to mystical patriotism. Therein 
they only followed Voltaire : " Candide "is by 
implication the most scathing satire on patriotism 
and nationalism that has ever been written; it is 
inspired by pure internationalism. A whole group 
of winters under the Third Republic revived the 
tradition of the " true France " and of the founders 
of the Revolution : they include such names as 
Guy de Maupassant, Octave Mirbeau, and the 
greatest of all French writers since Voltaire — 
Anatole France. Mirbeau's best novel, "Le 
Calvaire," contains an indictment of patriotism all 
the more effective since it leaves the reader to draw 
the conclusions; " Sebastien Roch " and others of 
his books have the same tendency. Mirbeau hated 
the bourgeoisie— its religion, its morality, and its 
ideals — with all his soul. Anatole France destroys 



RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION 177 

patriotism with ridicule ; his dehcate irony is more 
dangerous than Mirbeau's direct attacks. Writer 
after writer has exposed the brutahty and injustice 
of the military system and the evils of conscription, 
in such books as Lucien Descaves' '* Sous-offs " and 
the works of the great ironist, Georges Courteline. 
Infinite pathos underlies the humorous irony 
of "Le Train de 8 h. 47," and " Les Gaietes des 
I'Escadron," to mention two among Courteline 's 
many studies of life in military service. No other 
country has produced such a crop of anti-patriotic 
writers of great distinction as France; the reason 
can only be that mystical patriotism is alien 
from the rationalist, realist French nature, 
and has been imposed upon it by circum- 
stances. At present the artificial mystical 
patriotism exists side by side with the natural 
regional patriotism, but the former is transitory, 
the latter eternal. 

It is a true instinct that is making some French- 
men turn to decentralisation as an alternative to 
the present parliamentary system. Experience has 
shown that democracy is impossible in large coun- 
tries; it can be made possible not only in France 
but everywhere else only by decentralisation — if 
you like, by "restoring the heptarchy." Decen- 
tralisation is also essential to internationalism. 
Some of us thought once — I did myself — that the 
formation of large empires was a step towards inter- 
nationalism.. That was a delusion. They merely 
intensify and exaggerate national rivalries and dis- 
putes and have produced the most frightful war 
that the world has ever known. Moreover, they 
tend to produce a dull uniformity, to suppress local 
variety, and they are unfavourable to art and litera- 
ture, which have almost always flourished most in 
small communities. The greatest period of Italian 

N 



178 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

art was the period when Italy was spUt up into 
innumerable small States hardly extending beyond 
the limits of a town ; Italy is now one of the least 
artistic countries in the world. France seems to be 
an exception to this rule, because the whole intellec- 
tual and artistic life of the country has been con- 
centrated in Paris, which is to France what no other 
capital is to a country. But already there are signs 
of intellectual decentralisation in France; Paris no 
longer has the influence that it once had over 
the country. Uniformity is not necessary to 
unity; what is needed is unity in diversity, not 
merely in the nation but in the whole civilised 
world — an internationalism based on infinite local 
variety. 

The special need of decentralisation in France has 
been recognised by Frenchmen of all shades of 
opinion. The Boulangist movement was in the first 
place principally a movement in favour of decen- 
tralisation ; it was for that reason that many 
Radicals, including M. Clemenceau, rallied to the 
support of General Boulanger until he was bought 
by the Royalists and the movement became a plot 
against the Republic. This perversion of the Bou- 
langist movement discredited the demand for de- 
centralisation, and it became — quite illogically — 
the mark of a true Republican to oppose it. The 
fact that the Action Frangaise is in favour of de- 
centralisation merely because the provinces existed 
under the ancien regime still causes a large number 
— perhaps the majority — of Republicans to regard 
all decentralising proposals with suspicion. The 
decentralisation advocated by the Action Frangaise 
would, of course, be the opposite of democratic; 
democratic decentralisation is quite a different 
matter. There is actually before Parliament a 
scheme of decentralisation, the author of which is 



RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION 179 

M. Jean Hennessy, Deputy for the Charente, who 
began his political career as a Bonapartist, but is 
now a staunch Republican with strong leanings 
towards Socialism. M. Hennessy proposes the crea- 
tion of what, in order to disarm prejudice, he calls 
" regional " legislative assemblies ; each "' region " 
would include several of the existing departments 
and, I imagine, would be as nearly as possible iden- 
tical with an ancient province. He further pro- 
poses that the members of the regional assemblies 
should be elected on a system of proportional repre- 
sentation and should be the representatives, not of 
localities, but of occupations. All the electors 
would be grouped according to their trade, 
calling, or profession, and each group would be 
represented proportionately to its numbers ; there 
would be a special group composed of all that did 
not come under one of the other categories. This 
system, which resembles that of the Trade Union 
Congress, means, in fact, the substitution of econo- 
mic for political methods of social organisation. In 
any case, it is important that the members of a 
regional or any other elected assembly should be 
the delegates, not merely the representatives, of 
their electors. What has to be got rid of is the 
" representative system " under which a member 
of Parliament during his term of office is free from 
all control on the part of his electors. One method 
of exercising popular control of elected delegates is 
the referendum, which exists in Sv/itzerland, but I 
should prefer that which has been adopted by the 
Russian Socialist Republic, which gives the electors 
the power to withdraw a delegate in certain con- 
ditions ; the period for which an assembly is elected 
ought also to be short. The regional or provincial 
assemblies should have much more to do than the 
National Assembly, which might well be elected by 

N 2 



180 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

them, and should, of course, like them, consist of a 
single Chamber. It will be objected that the 
system of indirect election is undemocratic, and the 
example of the French Senate will be quoted. But 
the Senators are not chosen by political bodies like 
a provincial assembly; the system is doubly in- 
direct and, as has been shown, grotesquely unjust ;^ 
further, the Senators are elected for nine years, and 
there is no means of recalling them. If the National 
Assembly were elected before each of its sessions 
on a system of proportional representation by pro- 
vincial assemblies themselves elected at frequent 
intervals, it would be thoroughly representative of 
the country. 

The restoration to France of Alsace-Lorraine has 
made the question of decentralisation an urgent 
one. The French Government proposes to merge 
the recovered provinces into the centralised French 
system and split them up into departments ; the 
results of such a policy are likely to be disastrous 
and to cause grave discontent among the inhabi- 
tants of the provinces, who have had a considerable 
measure of autonomy for many years. The Alsa- 
tians that were most eager to return to France, 
such as the Abbe Wetterle, have declared that a 
special regime would be necessary for the recovered 
provinces at least for a time, and there is already 
in Alsace a strong demand for autonomy. The 
inhabitants of the recovered provinces are likely in 
any case to suffer economically from the change, 
for German social legislation is much more advanced 
than French ; there is a far better system of old age 
pensions and of insurance in Germany, school 
teachers and other Government servants are better 
paid, and in nearly every respect the economic 
conditions in Alsace-Lorraine have been better 
1 See page 100. 



RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION 181 

under the German rule than they were under the 
French or are hkely to be. These facts make the 
failure of the Germans to win over these peoples of 
their own race and language all the more astonish- 
ing ; it is a proof of incredible stupidity. But, how- 
ever strong the attachment of the Alsace-Lot- 
rainers to France, it is likely to be seriously 
impaired sooner or later if to economic losses are 
added political causes for discontent. If the 
French people are wise, they will insist on the crea- 
tion of provincial assemblies in Alsace and in the 
reconstituted province of Lorraine composed of 
the two portions which have been separated for 
nearly half a century. That would be a 
first step towards decentralisation ; it would not be 
long before the rest of France demanded the same 
liberties. 

One of the chief obstacles to this and many other 
necessary reforms in France is the way in which the 
Revolution has been made into a fetish. Because 
the Revolution did so much, too many Frenchmen 
seem to imagine that it left nothing more to be 
done and reached finality. One sees the Declaration 
of the Rights of Man quoted sometimes in French 
papers as if it were a body of inspired dogma which 
it is impious to question — such papers as the 
Temps often find it convenient to quote it 
against Socialism and even against the income 
tax, which is supposed to be condemned by the 
fact that the Revolutionaries believed in indirect 
taxation. That belief was, of course, a reaction 
against the oppressive personal taxes of the ancien 
regime and was made possible only by inadequate 
understanding of the incidence of taxation. Yet 
surely one may have even a passionate admiration 
for the Revolution and for the great work that it 
accomplished — every true Frenchman must have — 



182 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

and yet recognise that its authors were falHble hke 
other human beings, and that, Hke all human move- 
ments, it was incomplete. The present task before 
the French people is to continue and complete the 
devolution by carrying to their logical conclusion 
the great revolutionary principles which even their 
authors only imperfectly understood. 



CHAPTER VI 

SMALL PROPERTY AND ITS RESULTS 

" Meanness may be as bad a source of extravagance as reckless 
daring ; the business as well as the national affairs of France, 
since the triumph of the middle class, have too often been con- 
ducted in a petit bourgeois spirit, which is at the same time 
stingy and wasteful." — ALBEE,T-L:feoN Gtjbrard. 

Since the Revolution France has been essentially 
a bourgeois country, and it is still the bourgeoisie 
that holds the reins of power in spite of manhood 
suffrage. During the first half of the nineteenth 
century France was not even nominally a demo- 
cratic country, for the proletariat and even a large 
proportion of the land-owning peasantry were de- 
prived of the franchise by a property qualification 
which varied in amount at different times. But 
even since the extension of the franchise to every 
adult man the bourgeoisie has retained its hold. It 
has done so with the aid of the peasants. We have 
seen how the skilful use of the centralised system of 
administration enabled the bourgeoisie in 1830 and 
again in 1848 to frustrate the hopes of the Parisian 
proletariat when they seemed on the point of being 
fulfilled, but on the second occasion, at any rate, 
the plot would have faUed without the support of 
the peasants. It was they who, on December 10, 
1848, elected Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte President 
of the Second Republic, which they thereby 

183 



184 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

destroyed. This alliance between the bourgeoisie 
and the peasantry, which has continued ever 
since, although it has been weakening for 
several years, was a natural one, for, after all, 
the peasants — those that own land — are them- 
selves bourgeois in the strict sense of the 
term. A bourgeois is a person that owns 
property — land or capital — however small, and all 
the peasants, except the small minority of agricul- 
tural labourers, own property. There is, of course, 
this great difference between the bourgeoisie and 
the peasants — that the property of the latter con- 
sists entirely or chiefly of land which they work 
themselves and that they live by their own labour, 
not on rent or interest. The peasant never retires 
on his savings, he works as long as he is able to do 
so, and that is usually until the day of his death. 
A large section of the bourgeoisie, on the other 
hand, consists of people with incomes derived from 
rent or interest on property which they either in- 
herited or accumulated. The petit rentier class, 
which lives on small unearned incomes, is the most 
conservative, the most prejudiced, the most stupid, 
the most sordid and the most avaricious class in 
France : the class that has always thrown its whole 
weight against reforms, especially social reforms, 
the class that has supported colonial expansion and 
a bellicose and provocative foreign policy in the 
mistaken belief that war would be profitable. It is 
now beginning to find out its mistake. 

France is not only a bourgeois country, it is also 
to a very large extent a country of small property. 
Great fortunes, although industrial development 
and, above all, financial enterprises have made 
them more numerous in recent years than they 
once were, are still much fewer than in England 
or America. Property is more equally divided in 



SMALL PROPERTY 185 

France, and the law secures to a great extent its 
constant subdivision, while at the same time it does 
much to secure its transmission from one genera- 
tion to another in the same families and to prevent 
its changing hands. ^ I have already mentioned the 
advantages of the system of small property, which 
was the work of the Revolution ; its disadvantages, 
both economic and social, both moral and material, 
far outweigh the advantages. Small property has 
had a disastrous effect on the French people. It is 
chiefly responsible for the survival of obsolete 
methods of production, and it has produced exces- 
sive conservatism in business methods, want of 
enterprise, lack of initiative, timidity and, above 
all, avarice. One does not find before the Revolu- 
tion evidence of the excessive prudence, especially 
in regard to money matters, the inordinate respect, 
amounting in some cases to worship, of money, 
which have been too prevalent in modern France. 
Nowhere else have I met so often with the real 
spirit of the miser who loves and hoards money for 
its own sake, who has a positive affection for the 
very coins and likes to finger them and stroke them. 
French peasants will often make a bad bargain 
because they cannot resist a handful of gold or a 
bundle of bank notes spread out on a table before 
them ; one sees in their glistening eyes the evidence 
of an uncontrollable passion. The very word used 
in French for receiving payment of a sum of money 
indicates this curious passion for handling the 
actual coin : " je vais toucher 1 'argent," a French- 
man says — " I am going to finger the money." 
But let nobody be led into hasty generalisations 

^ By French law a married man is obliged to leave the bulk 
of his property to his wife and children. He may give a slight 
advantage to one child ; otherwise the children must^all share 
equally. 



186 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

and proceed to write down the whole French nation 
as misers. There are extremely generous people in 
France, plenty of them, and they are to be found in 
all classes. I have come across examples of great 
generosity on the part of peasants who are com- 
monly, and with some reason, regarded as the most 
thrifty class of the population. But generosity is 
more prevalent among those who earn their living 
by their brains or their hands and live in towns 
than it is among any class of property-holders. 
The least avaricious people in France as a rule are 
the proletariat and the professional, literary and 
artistic classes, especially those of what are called 
bohemian tendencies. The proletariat is indeed 
almost entirely free from avarice, for it is but little 
addicted to the vice of thrift. The workman as a 
rule spends his money as he earns it, as a man ought 
to do and as all would in reasonable economic con- 
ditions, or saves only a reasonable proportion for a 
rainy day. And the workman, who is at the mercy 
of an employer and may risk his whole livelihood by 
action, or even by the expression of opinions, un- 
palatable to the possessing classes, is more willing 
to take that risk than is a property owner to risk 
the loss or even the diminution of his property. 
The proletariat is the class in France that has the 
most moral courage, the most generosity, the least 
respect for officials and constituted authority, the 
most independence of character and the most initia- 
tive. In a word, it is, on the whole, the finest class 
of the French people, and on it the salvation of 
France mainly depends. But it must have the 
co-operation of that section of the intellectual and 
artistic bourgeoisie which shares its qualities and is 
still true to the generous ideals of a Daumier, a Vic- 
tor Hugo, a Courbet, or an Anatole France. It will 
also, I am convinced, have the co-operation of a 



SMALL PROPERTY 187 

large proportion of the peasants, who are beginning 
to realise that they have more in common with the 
proletariat than with the bourgeoisie, and among 
whom there is a marked tendency towards Social- 
ism. The demoralising influence of small property 
may have obscured the great qualities of the 
French peasantry, but it has not destroyed them ; 
above all, it has left intact their innate good sense. 
It has to be remembered in justice to the peasants 
that it was not merely concern for their property 
and the fear of Socialism that made them join with 
the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. Right 
down to the last decade of the last century the pro- 
letariat, and in particular the proletariat of Paris, 
was not only revolutionary and republican but also 
bellicose. The wars for which it clamoured were 
usually wars for an ideal, in accordance with the 
later revolutionary tradition ; it wanted France to 
conduct a crusade all over Europe for the liberation 
of oppressed nations, such as Italy and Poland. 
The good sense of the peasants made them averse 
from war for any object, and it was they who, in 
conjunction with the Monarchists, insisted on peace 
in 1871 against the Republican proletariat of the 
towns. "Who will say that they were wrong after 
our recent experience of a war for ideals — and its 
results ? 

There is, in fact, nearly if not quite as much 
avarice among certain classes of the bourgeoisie 
in France as among the peasants, and it has 
less excuse, for when a man's livelihood de- 
pends on tilling the land, it is natural that 
he should guard the land jealously. It is 
also inevitable that the people with small incomes 
derived from, property should cling desperately to 
that property; the petit rentier could hardly be 
other than what he is. But in France the rich are 



188 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

not as a rule generous, unless they happen to be 
Jews. There are, of course, very generous individuals 
even among wealthy peopk, but they are compara- 
tively few. The bourgeois do not seem to under- 
stand how unwise even from the point of view of 
their own self-interest their stinginess has been. In 
many respects the mentality of the bourgeois and 
that of the peasant are very much alike, and it is only 
natural that this should be so, since the majority 
of the bourgeois are the descendants of peasants. 
At the time of the Revolution the bourgeoisie was 
small in numbers and consisted of merchants and 
shopkeepers; the industrial revolution had not yet 
created the great manufacturer and the modern 
financial magnate. The grande bourgeoisie which 
sprang from the Revolution was, as I have already 
said, mainly recruited from the peasantry. During 
the nineteenth century the bourgeoisie continued 
to be recruited from the sons of peasants immigrat- 
ing into the towns from the country much more 
than from the proletariat, for the peasants have 
means to give a son a good education and the work- 
man has not. The peasant still survives in the 
bourgeois even after several generations ; the bour- 
geois is often a peasant demoralised by freedom 
from the necessity of earning his living. For the 
bourgeois has adopted to a great extent the old 
aristocratic ideal of " independent means " which 
enable a man to live without working. In the 
bourgeoisie the spender is more highly esteemed 
than the producer. This trait has been remarked 
by an acute observer of modern France, himself a 
Frenchman, M. Albert-Leon Guerard. " French 
social life," he says, " is still ruled by the old feudal 
prejudice that manual labour is servile and even 
that any gainful occupation is demeaning. The 
French ideal is not so much wealth as freedom from 



SMALL PROPERTY 189 

ignoble toil. We need hardly say that this concep- 
tion does not spring from laziness, for French in- 
dustry is proverbial. Throughout the nineteenth 
century every small manufacturer or tradesman 
aspired to the moment when he could abandon his 
business, which he really loved, and on a minimum 
competency set up as a gentleman."' ^ This is pro- 
foundly true, but I cannot follow M. Guerard when 
he attributes to " this aristocratic prejudice which 
ranks the spender higher than the toiler " the fact 
that there is an unusually large " disinterested and 
cultured public " in Prance. It is true that the 
disinterested and cultured public is unusually large, 
but the very last class that can be called either dis- 
interested or cultured is the class of petits rentiers, 
who have set up as gentlemen on a minimum com- 
petency. The large disinterested and cultured 
public is recruited chiefly from people that work 
with their brains or their hands, not from the com- 
mercial bourgeoisie, whether still actively engaged 
in business or in retirement. And just as the Jews 
are the most generous as a rule of the wealthy 
class, so they are on the whole the most disin- 
terested and cultured. The majority of the rich 
men in Paris that are really interested in literature 
or collect pictures and other works of art with real 
taste and appreciation are Jews ; yet the Jews are 
a very small minority of the French population, 
much less numerous than in England, still more so 
than in Germany. Moreover, the proportion of 
Jews among eminent men of science, university 
professors and savants, and men of distinction in all 
the learned professions is extraordinarily large in 
France. The Jews have not the petit bourgeois 
mentality, which is that of a peasant demoralised, 

^ " French Civilisation in the Nineteenth Century " (T. Fisher 
Unwin, 1914), page 176, 



190 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

and they have a remarkable faculty of combining 
what is called the artistic temperament with prac- 
tical capacity, such as is possessed to the same 
degree by no other race. The anti-Semite, who 
represents the Jew as a man with no interest in life 
but that of amassing money, makes a fundamental 
mistake. It is just because the Jew is not that 
as a rule that the gentile Frenchman, of whom the 
charge is more often true, sometimes finds it so 
hard to hold his own against him. 

If, indeed, the parsimonious thrift of the small 
French bourgeois were due, as M. Guerard seems 
to think, merely to a desire to secure an indepen- 
dence which would give leisure for intellectual pur- 
suits, one could only commend it. But I am afraid 
that that is not the case. The desire to become a 
gentleman — a rentier — is not at all the same thing. 
Certainly a man is wiser to retire from business at 
an age when he can still enjoy life rather than go 
on merely for the sake of amassing more money like 
the American millionaire. But, unfortunately, 
when a man up to the age of fifty or more has had no 
interest in life but that of laboriously adding one 
sou to another, he is not likely to acquire another 
at that age. It is probably because the American 
millionaire recognises this that he does not retire. 
But although the American business man has too 
often no interest in life but that of making money, 
his life is less sordid than that of the French petit 
bourgeois ; for he makes money while the other only 
saves it — there is a great difference between the 
two. The making of money as it is understood in 
America is itself an exciting pursuit, which has all 
the attractions of gambling, and the American at 
least spends while he is making; he is the least 
avaricious person in the world, and it is far more 
the excitement of making the money than its actual 



SMALL PROPERTY 191 

possession which attracts him. The tales of Ameri- 
can business romance published in American maga- 
zines reveal a career as venturesome and exciting 
as that of a highwayman. There is nothing venture- 
some or exciting in the life of a small French trades- 
man engaged in piling up sous, and when his 
ambition is attained and he retires to become 
a small rentier, he usually leads a life of 
dismal vacuity, for the only interest has gone out 
of it. He remains the incarnation of the petit 
bourgeois spirit. 

That spirit is, in fact, to too great an extent the 
spirit of the French bourgeoisie as a whole. The 
bourgeoisie, since it has been the master of France, 
has committed many political mistakes, but, if its 
power is now irretrievably jeopardised, as I am con- 
vinced that it is, perhaps its meanness and stingi- 
ness are even more to blame. The French bour- 
geoisie has, I believe, committed suicide as surely 
as did the noblesse of the eighteenth century. Even 
the war has not made the bourgeois loosen their 
purse-strings. " These people are quite willing to 
let their sons be killed," said an eminent French- 
man two or three years ago, " but you mustn't ask 
them for five francs." It was a severe judgment, 
but there was too much justification for it. At 
the beginning of the war a national fund was opened 
in France as in England for the relief of sufferers 
from the war; the total of the subscriptions never 
exceeded more than two or three hundred thousand 
pounds, of which the greater part was given by 
Jews, and the fund simply fizzled out long before 
the war was over. In England millions of pounds 
were raised for the same object. The wealthy 
classes in France have never been willing to pay 
their fair share of taxation ; their resistance to the 
income tax was an incredible manifestation of 



192 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

selfishness and avarice. Even the war did not 
diminish that resistance; while the bourgeoisie 
made a louder profession of patriotic sentiments 
than any other class of the community and 
clamoured more consistently than any other for 
war to the bitter end, it obstinately refused to pay 
for the war and continued as before to shift the 
burden of taxation on to the backs of the prole- 
tariat in the form of indirect taxes. Even when an 
income tax was at last imposed its rate was ridi- 
culously low, and the rich have succeeded for the 
most part in evading it to a great extent with the 
complicity of the Government. It was because no 
Government during the war dared touch the pockets 
of the bourgeoisie that a financial policy was 
adopted which had led to chaos and ruin. The 
bourgeoisie had counted that Germany would pay 
for everything ; now that that illusion is dispelled, 
it finds itself face to face with a financial situation 
which may well involve its own ruin, for the situa- 
tion is insoluble, and insoluble problems are apt to 
lead to revolutions. If, as some people say, the 
generosity of wealthy Jews is due to a shrewd ap- 
preciation of the necessity of paying ransom, at 
least it shows their superior intelligence. Had the 
wealthy French bourgeoisie been equally intelli- 
gent and, in default of generous sentiments, been 
driven to generosity by the instinct of self-preserva- 
tion — had it been willing to surrender the half or 
even the quarter to avoid losing the whole — it 
might have averted the fate which row awaits it. 
In no other country in the world is the bourgeoisie 
so bitterly hated by the proletariat as in France, 
and in no other country is there so much justifica- 
tion for that hate. The bourgeoisie of the nine- 
teenth century, like the noblesse of the eighteenth, 
has thought only of its privileges and its property ; 



SMALL PROPERTY 193 

it has shut its eyes and ears to the evidence of 
social injustice and to the demands of the workers 
for a better hfe; it has not even been wilHng to 
throw the sops of charity to the non-possessing 
classes. As surely as the noblesse of the eighteenth 
century it will pay the penalty of its avarice, its 
selfishness and its stupidity. 

If the grands bourgeois are not generous, the 
petits bourgeois are even less so; they could not be 
if they would, for they cannot afford it. After 
thirteen years' experience of France it is my delibe- 
rate conviction that private property in the means 
of production is even more pernicious when it is 
distributed in many hands than when it is concen- 
trated in a few. To begin with, the number of 
people demoralised by living on the community 
instead of by their own labour is greater. In the 
second place, the extension of private property by 
producing a large number of small fixed incomes 
promotes thrift, which inevitably leads to the love 
of money. People are thrifty because they aspire 
to become property owners, and when they have 
attained that ambition they are more thrifty than 
ever in order to keep what they have got. The 
love of money is the curse of France. It shows itself 
in many ways besides those that have been men- 
tioned — for instance, in that incurable propensity 
of so many French people for thinking that money 
is the only inducement that will make anybody do 
anything and for refusing to believe that any action 
can have disinterested motives. The people that 
recklessly and indiscriminately accuse all politi- 
cians and judges of being corrupt and all persons 
that do public or philanthropic work of having a 
financial interest in it are often only attributing to 
others the conduct of which they feel that they 
themselves would be capable in the same circum- 

o 



194 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

stances. Thirdly, owners of large property have 
at least the possibility of dealing generously with 
their tenants or employees if they wish; small 
property owners have not. The Parisian landlord 
is the most mean and rapacious that I have ever 
encountered. It is usually difficult to get him to 
do the most ordinary repairs ; he exacts conditions 
exceeding even the monstrous rights given him by 
the law, and when you pay your rent he will ask 
you for a penny for the receipt stamp. Many 
French landlords are not in a position to keep their 
houses in repair because they have no means be- 
yond the rent of perhaps a single house. I have 
known large landlords in England and I have 
known small ones in France; I prefer the former. 
Heaven help the unfortunate tenant that falls into 
the hands of a retired French grocer turned 
house-owner. I do not know what there is in 
the grocery trade that makes its effect on 
character particularly demoralising, but there is 
certainly something in the French use of the term 
" mentalite d'epicier." 

After all, however, the wealthy landlord in 
France is nearly as bad as the poorer one, for, as 
I have said, the grand bourgeois is apt to have a 
petit bourgeois mentality. It was a rich man — a 
typical representative of the bien-pensant and re- 
actionary grande bourgeoisie with connections in 
the noblesse — who, when I objected to the absence 
of a bath-room in an expensive flat, replied that he 
could not understand what anybody could want 
with so useless a luxury. The same gentleman 
strongly objected to repainting the flat, which, as 
I ascertained, had not been touched for at least 
twenty years, and it looked like it. It is not sur- 
prising that the hatred of the people of Paris for 
the bourgeoisie in general is multiplied fourfold in 



SMALL PROPERTY 195 

the case of owners of house property— the Vultures, 
as they are commonly called. The dwellings in 
which the State allows Parisian landlords to put a 
large proportion of the proletariat and the poorer 
bourgeoisie are a disgrace to a civilised country. 
The concierge is in too many cases a worthy agent 
of the landlord — obsequious and obliging to bour- 
geois tenants provided that their Christmas-boxes 
and other tips are adequate, hard and disagreeable 
to poor tenants. That is not, of course, true of all 
concierges ; I have known delightful ones. The 
position of a concierge is no doubt very difficult — ■ 
he or she is a sort of buffer between the landlord 
and the tenant and sometimes gets the kicks of 
both. The system is a bad one : the concierge 
ought to be a porter at the service of the tenants, 
but in fact he or she is the servant of the landlord 
installed to spy upon the tenants and report on 
their behaviour, employed by the landlord to con- 
vey any disagreeable communication that the latter 
may have to make to a tenant. At the same time 
the concierge is expected to observe elaborate regu- 
lations and even to possess a keen psychological 
insight. In all apartment houses of any preten- 
sions which have a front staircase (grand escalier) 
and a back staircase (escalier de service), the unfor- 
tunate concierge has to possess remarkable Judg- 
ment if he is to decide the momentous question of 
the particular staircase to be used by any given 
person. In general, nobody must carry a parcel 
up the sacred front staircase, but a parcel is some- 
times carried by a person of undoubted social posi- 
tion, and various professional men in France are 
accustomed to go about with large portfolios. The 
concierge of a house in which I once had a flat was 
so bullied by the landlord about the proper use of 
the staircase that he was always losing his head, and 

o 2 



196 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

one day sent up the back staircase to the kitchen 
door a friend who was coming to dine with me 
because, being not at all well off, he happened to 
be rather shabbily dressed. The same concierge 
was the victim of traps laid for him by the land- 
lord, who used to send people to the house carrying 
inoffensive-looking parcels in order to see whether 
the concierge would allow them up the front stair- 
case. So on the whole I am rather inclined to pity 
the concierges of the more expensive flats, from 
whom the tenants suffer little ; for myself, I have 
always been on excellent terms with my concierge. 
But it is often otherwise in cheap flats inhabited by 
the poor ; there the concierge is frequently a tyrant, 
and the tenants sometimes have to appease their 
ruler by tips far larger in proportion to their 
means and their rent than those given by the bour- 
geoisie. The landlord through the concierge exer- 
cises a minute supervision of the conduct and 
private life of the tenants. The great crime is to 
have a child — to have more than one is to be 
unworthy of any respectable dwelling. People 
have to conceal the fact that they have children 
until they have got into the flat. To a concierge — 
or rather to a landlord — a child ranks with dogs, 
cats, parrots and other noxious animals. A friend 
of mine, when she was visiting a flat to let, having 
assured the concierge, in reply to a question, that 
she had no child, was immediately asked whether 
she was expecting one ; she happened, moreover, 
not to be married. No doubt the landlords that 
make these rules belong to committees for further- 
ing the increase of the population — provided that 
there is no subscription. In any case it is probable 
that they lament the decay of morality caused by 
the neglect of the precepts of the Church, which 
shows itself in the refusal of the proletariat to have 



SMALL PROPERTY 197 

large families. For the French bourgeois with 
bourgeois ideas is as hypocritical as the British. 
The old noblesse, with all its faults and crimes, 
was less repugnant than these people whose only 
sincere sentiment is a belief in the sacred rights of 
property. 

If the demoralising effects of property on the 
character are more evident and more widespread in 
France than elsewhere, the system of small property 
is to blame. A man who has had plenty of money 
all his life and has never had to think about it may, 
and often does, lead a perfectly useless existence, 
but he is not likely to be sordid and petty. On the 
other hand, however praiseworthy may be the ob- 
jects of thrift, it must inevitably engender avarice. 
An existence spent in laboriously accumulating 
money a penny at a time is a petty and sordid 
existence and produces a petty and sordid 
character. Why, indeed, need one labour the point, 
since the fact is admitted by all thoughtful French- 
men ? The whole of French literature in the nine- 
teenth century from Balzac to Anatole France is 
filled with examples of the meanness and avarice 
produced by small property. Guy de Maupassant 
and Emile Zola have shown us what small property 
has done for the character of the peasants ; Octave 
Mirbeau has exposed with bitter irony the avidity 
and hypocrisy to be found among the bourgeois. 
The spirit is the same — the spirit of a man whose 
main object in life is to accumulate a little hoard 
and to defend it jealously when he has accumulated 
it. That meanness and avarice are not innate in 
the French character is shown by the proletariat 
and by the many other French people that have 
not come under the demoralising influence or 
have emancipated themselves from it. These 
vices are prevalent in France only because 



198 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

the cause produces its effect : the cause is small 
iproperty. 

The economic results of small property have been 
as bad as its results on character, of which they are 
to some extent the outcome. The lack of enter- 
prise which is so conspicuous in France is mainly 
the result of timidity — of the fear of taking any 
risk. Napoleon said that tHe English were a nation 
of shopkeepers; a hostile critic might say of the 
French that they were a nation of small shop- 
keepers. The one statement would be as unjust a 
generalisation as the other, but each has some 
foundation. The French are as a rule successful 
only in a small way of business; nobody knows 
better than they — and this is true particularly of 
the women — how to make a little shop pay by rigor- 
ously watching over the expenditure of every 
penny. But in big business they are less successful, 
because they so often cannot bring themselves to 
risk money even when the probability of profiting 
by the expenditure is so great that the risk is infini- 
tesimal. This is the secret of the predominance of 
Jews and foreigners — especially Germans before the 
war — in French business affairs. A Jew is far too 
shrewd not to understand that one cannot make 
money without spending it, and he is always pre- 
pared to spend it wKen he sees a good chance of a 
profitable return. That is equally true of the 
German business man, and also, of course, of the 
English and Arnerican. Unless and until the 
French learn that lesson they will continue to be 
cut out by foreigners in their own country. Before 
the war the foreigners were mostly Germans, for 
the simple reason that the Germans, having 
few colonies to go to, emigrated to other 
countries. In the immediate future no doubt it 
will be difficult for Germans to settle in France, 



SMALL PROPERTY 199 

but their places will be taken by English and 
Americans. 

Another example of this fear of taking any risk 
is the reluctance of French investors to find money 
for industrial undertakings in their own country. 
Even during the war, when huge profits were being 
made on munitions, and other army supplies, people 
that had, as they ought not to have had, Govern- 
ment contracts in their pockets which absolutely 
secured them large profits on the supply of material 
which they had not the means to manufacture, 
could not find the necessary capital in France and 
had to go to England or America for it. The 
French investor will look only at Government 
securities and trustee investments. Therefore the 
French investors poured into the coffers of the Tsar 
millions which would have been better employed 
in the development of their own country. Their 
unpleasant experience in regard to the Russian 
loans, which has shown that Government securities 
are not always safe, is a wholesome lesson. If this 
experience be turned to account, it may have bene- 
ficial results which will to some extent compensate 
for the heavy loss of about two-thirds of French 
foreign investments. Frenchmen have sometimes 
taken pride in the fact that they have been the 
bankers of the world, that, in the words of 
M. Guerard, " the more go-ahead nations — America, 
England, Germany — have all been compelled, in 
time of stress, to borrow from the inexhaustible 
' woollen stockings' of the French peasants."^ It 
is a profound mistake. What the French have 
been doing is to facilitate the development of other 
countries while they neglected that of their own. 
Or rather that has been done by the property 
owners in France, who do not seem to understand 
\ Op. cit., p. 177. 



200 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

that capital is much more useful to a country when 
it is directly employed in production than when it 
is lent to a foreign Government at three or four per 
cent. While they have been lending money to 
other countries, Germans and other foreigners have 
been employing their capital to develop the 
resources of France for their own profit. Herein, 
as has been said in a previous chapter, is to be 
found the explanation of the exceptional power of 
high finance in France. 

The timidity of the French bourgeois has also led 
him into a hide-bound conservatism in business and 
other practical matters. French business methods 
are just about a century behind the times. 
How can it be otherwise ? One always takes certain 
risks in making a change. An American friend of 
mine in Paris related to me an amusing example of 
the conviction of most French business men that 
any change in the methods of their great-grand- 
fathers is almost unthinkable. He made a proposal 
to a number of leading men in a certain trade in 
Paris, the very trade in which one would most 
expect to find intelligent people, and undoubtedly 
the persons in question are intelligent — I know seve- 
ral of them and can vouch for the fact. A meeting 
was arranged between my American friend and the 
others, at which he expounded his scheme in full 
detail. There was a general agreement that it was a 
good one and likely to prove profitable to all con- 
cerned, but its author was met by an insuperable 
objection : " Ce n'est pas dans nos moeurs " — it is 
not in accordance with our customs. The American 
was so taken aback that he replied with perhaps 
somewhat impolite abruptness : " Then you had 
better change them." The curious thing is that 
Parisians, at any rate, have an exaggerated love 
of novelty in many regards and like nothing better 



SMALL PROPERTY 201 

than a new fashion or custom, but business tradi- 
tion is Hke the Ark of the Covenant — it must not be 
touched. Even some of the most enlightened 
business men in Paris are astonishingly insular; 
they do not even know the names of important firms 
in their own line of business in other countries, still 
less appreciate the possibilities of dealing with 
them. I remember making, at the request of a 
friend in New York, a suggestion to a friend in 
Paris, who is a leading representative of the busi- 
ness in which both were engaged, a suggestion 
which seemed to me obviously to the advantage of 
both. My Parisian friend agreed at once — as a 
favour to me ; he honestly did not understand that 
there could be any advantage to him in doing so. 
Important French firms are sometimes incredibly 
parsimonious : I have heard of cases in which firms 
hesitated about sending samples abroad and pub- 
lishers even demurred to sending a free copy of a 
book to a foreign publisher who proposed to have it 
translated. These are but examples of the dread 
of risking money even if it be only a question of a 
franc or two ; of course the sample might not have 
led to any orders, and the foreign publisher might 
have decided after all not to translate the book. 
The ordinary French business man will spend a 
franc if he is quite certain that the expenditure will 
give him a profit of ten centimes, but the possibility 
of losing the franc is more than he can bear. Of 
course there are many exceptions — there are French 
business men who are enterprising and do their 
best to introduce new methods, sometimes a diffi- 
cult matter; but they are in a minority, and a large 
proportion of them are Jews. 

One thing that strikes a foreigner about French 
business methods is the waste of time that they 
involve. Presumably from a fear of committing 



202 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

themselves, French business men have a rooted 
objection to writing letters, and insist on an inter- 
view to settle a trivial matter which in England 
would be easily disposed of by correspondence or 
on the telephone. As French politeness requires 
that the first quarter of an hour of a business inter- 
view shall be spent in inquiries after the health of 
the respective families and general small talk, a 
great deal of time is taken up in this way. The 
amount of unnecessary time and labour expended 
in France is enormous ; business hours in Paris are 
much longer than in London, but no more is done 
in the day. An antediluvian system of book- 
keeping prevails in France, where the simple 
method of paying all receipts into the bank and 
making all payments by cheque has never taken 
root. Although cheques are beginning to be more 
used, it is still the practice, even in large business 
concerns, to put the receipts into a safe in cash and 
notes and make payments out of them even for large 
amounts. The complication that this system 
causes in the accounts and the opportunities that 
it gives for embezzlement may easily be imagined. 
Dishonest cashiers are more common in France 
than in England for the simple reason that cashiers 
have more opportunities of, and temptations to, 
dishonesty. They are miserably paid, have large 
sums of money in cash always in their hands, and, 
if they yield to temptation, the complicated system 
of book-keeping makes it easy for them to conceal 
their depredations for a considerable time. The 
system of book-keeping is just as old-fashioned and 
complicated in banks as eTsewhere, and seems to 
have been devised with the intention of making 
fraud difficult to discover, with the result that 
bank clerks are always disappearing with large 
sums in cash. There have been several sensational 



SMALL PROPERTY 203 

cases of this kind : one gentleman, who had gone off 
with several thousand pounds, was arrested 
on a yacht on which he was making a tour 
of the world. The disinclination of Frenchmen to 
use cheques is an example of the curious passion 
for actually handling money and also of the 
timidity which fears to trust a bank. Many men 
with large incomes have no banking account, and 
if by chance they receive a cheque will cash it 
over the counter; they think nothing of keeping a 
couple of thousand pounds in their house or of 
carrying about a couple of hundred in their pockets. 
I have seen a man give a thousand-franc note to a 
waiter to pay for drinks in a cafe. This was done in 
a cafe on the Grand Boulevard on the day of the 
general mobilisation in 1914, and the waiter, who 
happened to be a German, was never seen again, 
nor was the thousand-franc note. It is this unwise 
habit of keeping large sums of money in the house 
or on the person that makes murders for gain, 
burglaries, and street attacks so common in France. 
The peasants still keep their savings as a rule, if 
not in a stocking, at any rate in a box under their 
beds, for they will not trust them even to the 
Government savings bank. The result is that every 
house in a French village is worth breaking into. 
In nearly every village there are one or two old 
women living alone who are known to have a few 
hundred francs in the house. Some day or other the 
ne'er-do-well of the village can no longer resist the 
temptation to possess himself of the few hundred 
francs, and when the old woman calls for help, he 
knocks her on the head to avoid discovery. That 
is the simple history of the typical murder so 
deplorably prevalent in French country districts. 
In the towns the chances are that any bourgeois 
flat, even a poor one, will contain enough money 



204 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

to make burglary worth while, and that any 
well-dressed man in the street will have at least 
twenty pounds on his person — -possibly a great 
deal more. 

The refusal to make use of the banking system 
and make payments by cheque has other grave in- 
conveniences. It is a heavy expense to the State, 
which is obliged to mint a much larger quantity of 
coins than would otherwise be the case ; the amount 
of coinage in circulation at any given moment in 
France is several times larger than in England. 
Since the war the Government has been appealing 
to the public to use cheques as much as possible, 
but" the appeals do not seem to have had much 
effect. People fhat wish to use cheques often find 
a difficulty in getting them accepted, either because 
the person to whom a cheque is offered has no 
banking account and objects to the trouble of 
cashing it, or because he is suspicious of any pay- 
ment not made in specie. Every lease in France 
contains the stipulation that the rent must be paid 
in gold and silver coins, but there are now many 
landlords who accept cheques. These mediaeval 
methods of payment make the collection of debts a 
complicated affair involving much useless labour. 
In England a tradesman sends an account to his 
customer and waits a reasonable time for a cheque. 
In France he has to keep employees to carry round 
receipted bills to the customers' houses to collect 
the money, and they often call half a dozen times 
before they get it, as the customer may be out or 
unwilling to pay. As for the Government, although 
it urges people to use cheques, it does not set the 
example ; if one has to be paid anything by any 
public office, one has to go and fetch the money. 
The same is the case in regard to all public services, 
such as gas companies, whose methods are even 



SMALL PROPERTY 205 

more absurd than those of business in general. 
Before one can get gas or electric light, one has to 
pay several visits to the office of the company and 
finally to sign three copies of a long agreement. 
The affection for what the French appropriately 
call " paperasses " (waste paper) on the part of all 
authorities, pubhc bodies, and Government ofiQces 
is, of course, a positive disease. A Frenchman 
spends half his life in signing papers, apparently for 
no object but that of providing easy employment 
for an army of otherwise useless officials. 

It must be admitted that the French banks have 
done nothing to induce people to use them to a 
greater extent. The French banking system is as 
obsolete as French business methods. There is no 
clearing house, and a cheque paid into one bank in 
Paris is carried by a messenger, called the " gargon 
de recette," to the bank on which it is drawn and 
cashed over the counter ; if the cheque be drawn on 
a provincial bank, the bank into which it is paid 
sends it to its agent in the place in question, who 
treats it in the same way. These bank messengers, 
who are always going about with large sums of 
money in their satchels, are marked out as the 
victims of aggression, especially as they wear a 
uniform and a cocked hat to enable the apaches 
to identify them at once. It is their business also 
to collect bills when they become due. The pay- 
ment of accounts by bills at three months is a very 
common practice in France. If the drawer of the 
bill has a banking account he may make it payable 
at his bank, but that is seldom the case ; as a rule 
the person in whose favour the bill is drawn gives it 
to a bank to collect, and it is presented when it 
becomes due at the house of the drawer. The bills 
collected by the bank messengers either at banks or 
elsewhere may easily amount to several thousand 



206 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

pounds in a single day, and with such sums they 
walk about the streets of Paris. A trick which has 
more than once been resorted to is the following : 
two accomplices agree that one shall draw a bill on 
the other, and when the bank messenger comes to 
present the bill they knock him on the head and 
empty his satchel. It is quite simple. French banks 
pay interest on current accounts, but they also 
deduct a small commission from every cheque paid 
into the account ; the result at the end of every six 
months is an account of the interest and commission 
on several foolscap pages, resulting in a balance on 
one side or the other of frs.4.85. It does not seem 
to have occurred to any bank that this is so much 
waste labour, and that it would be much simpler 
to suppress both interest and commission. By law 
a French bank is not obliged to honour the cheques 
of a client in any one day to a greater aggregate 
amount than frs. 10,000 (£400), unless the client has 
given at least two days' notice of his inten- 
tion to draw to a larger amount. In practice 
many banks waive this right and honour any 
cheques presented for which there is provision, but 
all do not. The consequence is that some business 
firms send to their bank every day a list of the 
cheques that they have drawn — another piece of 
useless labour arising from an absurd and indeed 
unjust legal provision. The French law favours 
banks just as it favours landlords. It is not sur- 
prising that people without banking accounts do 
not care for cheques, for it is a long business to cash 
one at a French bank, and one is lucky if it takes 
less than a quarter of an hour ; half an hour is quite 
normal in one of the large Parisian banks. After 
one has handed in the cheque at one counter, it 
makes the tour of the premises, passing from one 
employee to another, each of whom makes an entry 



SMALL PROPERTY 207 

in a book ; finally one receives the money at another 
counter or at a sort of cage in which the cashier is 
confined. The last thing that French banks seem 
to desire is legitimate banking business. They give 
no facilities to their customers and will not accept 
registered stock as security for an overdraft or a 
loan, only bonds payable to bearer. On the other 
hand, they sometimes embark on enterprises of a 
kind in which no English bank would be permitted 
to engage. The net result of the French banking 
system is that enterprising and progressive French 
business men are deserting the French banks for the 
foreign banks established in France, and the French 
bankers are being cut out by their English, Ameri- 
can, and, before the war, German competitors. 
During the last ten years foreign banks have 
greatly developed in Paris. At the beginning of the 
war one at least of the great French joint stock 
banks would have stopped payment but for the 
banking moratorium, which indeed was decreed 
chiefly for the purpose of saving it. The French 
bankers can suggest only one remedy for this state 
of affairs— Protection, that panacea of too many 
Frenchmen; they want foreign banks to be penal- 
ised or excluded from France. It does not occur to 
them that it is they who are to blame for the success 
of the foreign banks and that the true remedy is to 
reform their own methods. 

In the national finance one finds the same sort of 
methods as in business and banking. Local taxes 
are collected by the mediaeval system of the octroi, 
a tax on the food brought into a town, which, of 
course, falls most heavily on the poor. The system 
of direct taxation was until recently equally 
out-of-date, and there is a host of petty and 
vexatious indirect taxes, stamp duties, etc., 
which are so many pin-pricks in the skin of 



208 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

the citizen, and some of which are hardly 
worth the cost of collection. One is always 
having to buy stamped paper merely to make some 
application to an official or for some other purpose, 
or having to pay a few pence for the privilege of 
signing one's name to something or other. In fact, 
the whole system of finance is as pettifogging as it is 
antiquated. During the half-century of the Third 
Republic France has had only two statesmen with 
financial ability — M. Rouvier and M. Caillaux; 
M. Rouvier is dead and M. Caillaux is in prison, the 
victim of the undying hatred of the bourgeoisie for 
the author of the income tax. M. Caillaux would 
no doubt have been wiser had he listened to those 
who used in regard to the income tax the universal 
objection to all change : " Ce n'est pas dans nos 
moeurs." The establishment of the income tax 
might at last have given France a straightforward 
and simple system of finance, but all the old taxes 
except the patent e have been left in existence, and 
M. Caillaux's income tax scheme has been so emas- 
culated and is so inadequately applied that most 
of the benefit of the reform has been lost. At 
present, thanks to the incompetence of M. Ribot 
and M. Klotz, French national finance is in so 
hopeless a state of chaos that even a genius would 
shrink from tackling it. The only man in France 
that could do so with the slightest hope of success 
is M. Caillaux. 

Although the State is petty in its dealings with 
the taxpayer and parsimonious in small things, it 
is also very extravagant; French national finance, 
like French business, is too often conducted on a 
system which is at once penny wise and pound 
foolish. Money is wasted on hosts of useless 
officials, whose number is constantly being in- 
creased in order that places may be found for 



SMALL PROPERTY 209 

friends and political supporters; there is no ade- 
quate supervision of Government contracts, in 
connection with which there are often very shady- 
proceedings, with the result that the State fre- 
quently pays twice as much as it need; there is 
lavish expenditure on " special missions " to 
foreign countries and on perquisites of all sorts; 
State grants and subsidies are distributed reck- 
lessly and without adequate reason : it is all "aux 
frais de la Princesse," and the " Princess " — that 
is to say, the State — can afford to pay. So the 
national expenditure goes up annually by leaps 
and bounds, but there is never any money avail- 
able for really useful objects. I cannot better sum 
up the situation than in the words of M. Guerard : 
*' Meanness may be as bad a source of extrava- 
gance as reckless daring; the business as well as 
the national affairs of France, since the triumph 
of the middle class, have too often been conducted 
in a petit bourgeois spirit which is at the same 
time stingy and wasteful." ^ 

French conservatism extends to most of the 
practical matters of life. No people is more open 
to new ideas or more suspicious of new methods. 
The inadequacy of the laws relating to hygiene 
and sanitation has already been mentioned; they 
would not remain as they are if there were any 
general demand for their amendment, but in fact 
there is not. The bulk of the bourgeoisie seem 
quite content that landlords should regard a bath- 
room as the luxury of the few and add about £20 
a year on to the rent of any fiat that contains one. 
The sanitary arrangements even in expensive fiats 
are simply incredible. The first house in which I 
lived in Paris — it was in the Faubourg St. Ger- 
main — was not connected with the main drainage 

1 Op. cit, p. 177. 

P 



210 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

system, as I discovered only after I had signed the 
agreement, and there was no constant water 
supply in the water-closet; the cistern had to be 
filled by hand. The stench, when the cesspool 
under the courtyard was cleared out periodically, 
was indescribable. In the flat to which I next 
moved — a more expensive one in the neighbour- 
hood of the Madeleine, in the very centre of Paris 
— the house was indeed attached to the main 
drainage system, but there was hardly any flow 
of water in the closet and the apparatus seemed 
to be about a century old. The landlord graciously 
allowed me to put in a new apparatus at my own 
expense on condition that I bound myself in the 
lease to remove it at the end of the tenancy and 
replace it by the old one if he so desired. I cannot 
think that this condition was anything but an 
empty demonstration of the landlord's rights; in 
any case, when I left the flat, he did not 
require me to remove the improvement that 
I had made. When the old apparatus was 
removed the stench was so poisonous that the 
workmen, who after all were used to such things 
and were not squeamish, were nearly made ill. I 
never in my life saw an apparatus in so horribly 
filthy a condition; its removal would have been 
ordered by a sanitary inspector in England years 
before. It is amazing that a people so enlightened 
as the French should accept such conditions and 
that any Government in the twentieth century 
should tolerate them. But the propertied classes 
in France are the masters of the country, and, 
until they are dispossessed, no change is likely. 
If these are the conditions in expensive bourgeois 
fiats, it may be imagined in what conditions the 
proletariat lives. The results on the health of the 
nation are deplorable. Even in some country 



SMALL PROPERTY 211 

districts the sanitary conditions are such that tuber- 
culosis is rampant. Some country districts are, of 
course, more enUghtened than others ; as a rule the 
enlightened districts are those where the school- 
master is the predominant influence and the others 
those in which the predominant influence is that 
of the cure. I know a district in the Franche- 
Comte which comes within the latter category; 
nearly everybody in the place goes to Mass and 
the school is very badly attended. The peasants, 
most of whom are quite well off, live in the most 
filthy conditions, with animals in their houses and 
so-called dust-heaps immediately under their 
windows. In that lovely valley, where the purest 
air is available for everybody, there were at the 
time of my last visit a few years ago several cases 
of consumption in a population of between two 
and three hundred. Both the mayor's sons were 
tuberculous, and the only remedy to which their 
father had resorted, with the full approval of the 
cure, was that of sending them on a pilgrimage to 
a neighbouring miraculous shrine, which does not- 
seem to have been in working order, for both the 
sons have since died. The village schoolmaster, a 
man of some intelligence, deplored to me the 
insanitary habits of the population and did his 
best to get them altered. The only result of his 
efforts was that the cure denounced him as an 
atheist and advised his flock from the pulpit not to 
send their children to school, an advice which they 
readily followed, as they much preferred to use 
their labour in the fields. Improved hygiene in 
France would mean an enormous diminution in 
such diseases as tuberculosis and typhoid and a 
great reduction of the death-rate, which is much 
higher than it ought to be. But few people in 
France seem to realise that fact or to regard any 

p 2 



212 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

change in the " moeurs " as possible in this or in 
any other respect. There can hardly be anywhere 
in the world a conservatism so conservative as 
French conservatism; only when one knows the 
country does one realise how obstinate it is and 
how immense is its force of resistance to all change. 
In many respects France is still a mediaeval 
country. Even that strange combination of an 
excessive desire for gain with an excessive suscep- 
tibility in regard to the " point of honour " which 
one often finds in France is typically mediaeval; 
my friend Mr. Oswald Barron, who knows the 
Middle Ages as well as he knows his own time, 
assures me that it was characteristic of the age of 
chivalry. 

One reason why business methods are so back- 
ward in France is that too many of the most 
promising young men do not go into commerce 
and industry, but swarm into the professions and 
the Government service. One reason of this is the 
desire of parents outside or on the verge of the 
bourgeoisie to make their son a bourgeois; the 
other is their fear of taking any risks, which leads 
them to prefer to a business career for their sons 
the security of the Government service with a 
pension at the end of it. Peasants and small 
tradesmen will deny themselves and make immense 
sacrifices to make their son a minor Government 
official, although Government officials are miser- 
ably underpaid and the son would have a 
better chance of doing well for himself in 
any other calling, even that of an artisan. 
But the minor Government official is a bour- 
geois, his pay, though small, is certain, he will 
never lose his job except in case of gross mis- 
conduct, and there is always the prestige that 
attaches in France to an official of any kind. 



SMALL PROPERTY 213 

Moreover, the young man in an official position, 
however humble, may hope to marry a girl with 
a small dot. Thus in too many cases is capacity 
which might have been usefully employed wasted 
in a life of dull and underpaid monotony. There 
is no class in France more to be pitied than these 
bourgeois who have to keep up appearances on 
less than the wages of a navvy. Sometimes a 
talent for writing enables the victim to escape into 
journalism or literature. The Government service 
has given us a Georges Courteline, and he out of 
his experience of it has given us "Messieurs les 
Ronds-de-Cuir, " which makes us grateful that he 
has been through the mill- 

The professions are also overcrowded with young 
men, many of whom would be better employed in 
agriculture, commerce or industry, for the pro- 
fessions are an avenue to a political career : law- 
yers and doctors swarm in politics. And a political 
career is the avenue to various kinds of success 
for an able and ambitious man. If he chooses the 
Left he may hope some day to be a Minister or 
even President of the Republic; if he chooses the 
Right he may aspire to the society of the Faubourg 
St. Germain, to the Institute, and even to the 
Academic Frangaise; in any case he will have the 
chance of making money without working for it. 
The consequences are, to quote M. Guerard once 
more, that " agriculture, commerce, industry and 
labour are deprived of their natural leadership. 
The work of material production, thus despised, is 
too often left to narrow-minded and sordid petty 
capitalists, thrifty and hard-working enough, but 
deficient in foresight and enterprise."^ 

It may be asked why the young men themselves 
agree to this. The answer is that too many of 
1 Op. cit., p. 177. 



214 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

them lack the initiative to assert themselves and 
allow their career to be decided for them; they 
submit to the oppressive influence of the JFrench 
Family, which is often destructive of initiative and 
personal independence. So are the French system 
of property and the law of bequest, which secures 
to children an absolute reversion to the pro- 
perty of their parents. 1*00 many young men 
in France know that they have not to depend 
entirely on their own exertions, that there is pro- 
perty behind them which they must some day 
inherit if they survive their parents. They 
are more secure than the son of an American 
millionaire, who is often turned out on the world 
to make his own living and given to understand 
that his share in his father's property depends on 
his own conduct. How often in England has one 
seen young men ruined by the possession of a small 
income, which paralysed their energies by relieving 
them of the absolute necessity of working and led 
them to drift into a fife of idleness ! In France the 
number of young men with some small property or 
the prospect of it is very much larger, and, although 
young Frenchmen nearly always have -some 
occupation, the possession or prospect of private 
means, however small, leads them to prefer a safe 
and easy occupation in which, although the gains 
may be small, there is no risk and no necessity 
for individual effort. The professions do not, of 
course, come within that category, but the Govern- 
ment service does. An active and energetic Govern- 
ment servant — and there are a few — reaps no 
benefit from his activity and energy; he has the 
same pay as the others, who just put in a few 
hours occasionally at their office and do in a per- 
functory way the very small amount of work that 
is necessary, and he has no more chance of pro- 



SMALL PROPERTY 215 

motion. One of the reasons, perhaps the chief 
reason, why there are more enterprise and initative 
in England, in America, and in Germany than in 
France is that in those countries a much larger 
proportion of men have no property and have 
nothing but their own energies to depend upon. 
The only healthy society is one in which everybody 
earns his living and nobody has anything but what 
he earns. That ideal can be attained only by the 
abolition of private property in the means of pro- 
duction, but, until it is attained, a country like 
the United States, where few own property but the 
opportunities of earning are great, is in a more 
healthy condition economically than a country 
where many own property but the opportunities 
of earning are small. It is much better for a 
country that money should constantly change 
hands, that fortunes should be easily made and as 
easily lost, than that the capital should be held 
by generations of " narrow-minded and sordid 
petty capitalists." It is said that the French 
system produces stability; perhaps it does, but a 
dynamic society is more alive than a static one, and 
social stability may easily become stagnation. Of 
course, huge individual fortunes — the concentra- 
tion of a large proportion of the capital of a 
country in a few hands as in the United States — 
are a danger. Such conditions might end in a 
servile State controlled by a few plutocrats — that 
is already to some extent the case in the United 
States. But the very fact that the property owners 
are few will make it much more easy to get rid of 
them when once the nation is determined to do so. 
France is even more a plutocracy than America, 
and the lot of the propertyless is all the worse from 
the fact that their masters are many. The great 
financiers who really rule France can always 



216 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

rely on the support of the army of property 
owners, who form a soUd barrier against all 
change and to whom the conservatism and the 
backwardness of France in so many respects are 
mainly due. 

The smallness of earnings in France is itself the 
result of the subdivision of property, and the thrift 
of the French people has in the end benefited only 
the purely capitalist class — those who have 
attained enough property to live entirely on rent 
and interest. One reason why workmen have 
higher wages in England and America than in 
France is that English and American workmen 
have never been thrifty. Wages in France are not 
merely nominally lower than in England or 
America; their purchasing power is less. Indeed 
the cost of living of the proletariat is higher in 
France than in England, so that the superiority of 
English wages is even greater than appears from 
the nominal money values. And even if the cost of 
living all round be higher in the United States than 
in France — a point as to which I am very doubtful 
— the difference is nothing like so great as that 
between the nominal money value of the wages. 
In countries where people do not save the em- 
ployers are obliged in the end to pay higher wages, 
especially if the proletariat be strongly organised; 
in a country where most people save and, there- 
fore, always have something to fall back upon, 
the majority will always accept lower wages than 
they would if they had nothing to fall back upon. 
The French proletariat does not practise thrift as 
do the peasants and the small bourgeois, but it is 
still more thrifty than the English or American 
proletariat — and its employers reap the benefit. 
The wages of the French proletariat have tended 
to rise steadily as it became less and less thrifty, 



SMALL PROPERTY 217 

and its trade organisations have become stronger, 
although they are still weaker than in England or 
America, partly because the proletariat in France 
is a smaller portion of the population than in the 
other two countries, partly because men that have 
other resources, however small, in addition to their 
earnings are less willing to join Trade Unions than 
men that have none. But it is in regard to salaries 
that the effect of the subdivision of property on 
earnings is most marked. All the salaried classes 
in France are miserably underpaid, from the 
highest to the lowest — Government servants, 
judges, professors and teachers no less than bank 
clerks and office employees. The difference 
between salaries in France and salaries in England 
or America is far greater than the difference 
between wages. A French judge of the High Court 
does not get more than about £1,200 a year and 
the Keeper of Pictures in the Louvre has a 
salary of £600. The low rate of salaries is 
due to the assumption that either a man 
has private means or else his wife has a dot 
— and that is very often the case. So it is assumed 
in fixing the salaries of women that every woman 
has a man to keep her, and there were before 
and even during the war directors of theatres 
in Paris not ashamed to pay chorus girls 
eighty francs (£3 4s.) a month. During the strike 
of the midinettes (the employees in the dress- 
making and millinery trades) in Paris in 1917 one 
of the leading employers said to the strikers : "I 
don't see why you want higher wages ; you can 
always get a man to keep you." The result of 
this system is that the men that have no private 
means and whose wives have no dots, the women 
that either cannot or will not find a man to keep 
them, cannot possibly live on their salaries, and 





218 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

the further result is that they are tempted to get 
money by other means — not always very scrupu- 
lous. One of the reasons of the prevalence of 
corruption in the public service and of defaulting 
cashiers in banks and business houses is the dis- 
graceful inadequacy of the salaries paid. Govern- 
ments and private employers that pay salaries on 
which a man cannot live deserve to be cheated, 
and they frequently are. 

It is easy to understand how the subdivision of 
property tends to reduce salaries, for we have a 
parallel case in England in the payment of women's 
labour. Before the war the salaries and wages 
paid to women were low chiefly because a large 
proportion of the employed were either married 
women or girls that lived at home who, not being 
entirely dependent on their earnings, were willing 
to accept low salaries. The possession by a large 
proportion of French employees of a small amount 
of property has exactly the same effect. In both 
cases the consequences are disastrous for those that 
have nothing but their earnings to depend on. 
Ultimately the salaried classes of the bourgeoisie 
in France would be better off if they had no pro- 
perty; the tendency that they are now showing 
to combine with the proletariat is perhaps 
a symptom that they are beginning to recognise 
that fact. It is a sign of change when actors, 
artists and bank clerks form Trade Unions alid 
affiliate themselves to the General Confederation 
of Labour. 

The practice of illicit commissions is rampant 
in France, and although a law was recently passed 
to suppress it, it is unlikely to have much effect. 
So general has the habit of giving and receiving 
commissions become that it has spread to the 
classes of the community not engaged in business ; 



SMALL PROPERTY 219 

there are plenty of men and women belonging to 
the authentic noblesse that do not hesitate to 
accept commissions from dealers for selling works 
of art to their friends or to American millionaires 
that have penetrated into the Faubourg St. Ger- 
main. One lady belonging to an historic French 
family boasted of the success with which she had 
planted spurious pictures on Americans. Another 
result of low salaries and wages is the tipping 
system, which is universal; one can give tips in 
France to people to whom one would never dare 
to offer one in England, to certain classes of 
Government officials, for instance. The tipping 
system, of course, does not permanently increase 
earnings. The tips in most cases ultimately reach 
the pockets of the employers, who in some trades 
have ceased to pay any wages at all, or even, as 
in the case of waiters, make their employees pay 
them. The waiters are now agitating for the aboli- 
tion of tips, but it will be very difficult to induce 
the French to abandon the traditional pourboire 
which has become deeply rooted in their " moeurs." 
When the Duval restaurants were first started tips 
were prohibited and the waitresses were paid 
wages, but it was soon found impossible to enforce 
the prohibition. Some customers insisted on 
giving tips and naturally got the most attention; 
finally, the prohibition was abandoned, and so was 
the payment of wages to the waitresses, who now 
pay two francs a day, in return for which they 
get their meals, and depend for their earn- 
ings entirely on the tips. In French theatres 
the employees are paid no wages and have to prey 
on the public. Before one reaches one's seat in a 
Parisian theatre one has to run the gauntlet of 
three ouvreuses, the lady who presides over the 
cloak-room, the lady who sells programmes, and 



220 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

the lady who shows one to one's seat, with the 
result that the price of the seat is considerably 
augmented. 

The effects of the subdivision of property on 
agriculture are quite as bad as on commerce and 
industry. Peasant proprietorship has now been 
tried in France for more than a century ; it was no 
doubt an improvement on the old system of land 
tenure, and for a time it worked well. It has had, 
as I said in a previous chapter, the enormous 
advantage of setting the peasant free from the 
domination of the chateau and the cure and 
making him independent. But the introduction of 
agricultural machinery and of new agricultural 
methods has made peasant proprietorship an 
anachronism and it is becoming more and more 
evident that it is doomed. The agricultural 
methods of France are in general as obsolete as its 
business methods. They vary, of course, in 
different parts of the country — some are more pro- 
gressive and enlightened than others — but over a 
great part of France one can still see ploughs that 
look as if they came out of a miniature in a 
mediaeval manuscript being drawn by a yoke of 
oxen. It is very picturesque but hardly practical. 
The English farmer is sufficiently conservative, but 
the French farmer is more so. How indeed can a 
small peasant farmer with little education ever get 
to know about new discoveries or improved 
methods ? He is content with the methods of his 
father and grandfather, and does not even know 
that there are any others. Moreover, even if he 
were disposed to use machinery, he could not 
afford to buy it, and it would not pay to buy it 
for a farm so small as most of the farms in France. 
In some parts of France, especially in Normandy, 
where the farms are as a rule larger than elsewhere, 



SMALL PROPERTY 221 

a certain amount of machinery is used; as a rule 
the farmers hire it. Since the war the Government 
has made a half-hearted attempt to supply 
machinery to the farmers, but it has not gone very 
far. Undoubtedly considerable progress has been 
made in some regards, for example, wine-growing 
has been greatly extended during recent years, and 
the vineyards of France are one of the most valu- 
able national assets. Perhaps it is in nursery 
gardening that most progress has been made, par- 
ticularly in the neighbourhood of Paris and other 
large towns. The great increase in productivity 
obtained by intensive culture makes it profitable 
to grow fruit and vegetables within easy distance 
of large towns, where land is expensive, and one 
gets vegetables in Paris as fresh as if they had 
come out of one's own garden. Never have I been 
able in London to get such lettuces as one has in 
Paris. But wine-growing and nursery gardening 
do not require machinery and can be carried on 
satisfactorily on a small scale. That is not the 
case with other branches of agriculture. Every 
peasant proprietor wants to grow some of every- 
thing on his small farm, with the result that it is 
divided up into small patches of various crops, 
often without much regard for the qualities of the 
land. The first aim of the peasant proprietor is 
to grow what he wants for himself, and although 
this primitive system is attractive from the senti- 
mental point of view, it is not suited to modern 
economic conditions. Production on a large scale 
has too many advantages to be abandoned, and 
those advantages are as great in agriculture as in 
other industries. I am told by agricultural experts 
that the corn production of France is considerably 
less than it ought to be for the amount of land 
employed. 



222 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

One of the worst results of peasant proprietor- 
ship is the amount of useless labour that it involves. 
Nowhere in France, so far as I know, are the fields 
dug with spades as they still sometimes are in 
Italy, but in many parts of France the farmers 
have not got much beyond that stage. The system 
of growing crops in small patches and the lack of 
machinery make the life of the agricultural popula- 
tion one of monotonous and unending toil. The 
time has now come when this system of isolated 
production on a small scale will have to be altered, 
for the simple reason that it is no longer possible 
to find the labour for it. Unless there is an 
immediate and radical change in French agricul- 
tural methods, a large quantity of land will inevit- 
ably go out of cultivation. Even before the war 
the problem of agricultural labour was already 
becoming serious. For many years there has been 
a steady exodus from the country into the towns; 
in the five years 1906-1911 the rural population 
decreased by about 600,000 and the urban popula- 
tion increased by about 950,000.^ No census has 

1 Between 1872 and 1911, whereas the whole popiilation of 
France increased by 3,498,588, that of the department of the 
Seine (Paris and its subtirbs) increased by 1,933,982, and the 
aggregate population of the other seventy-nine towns that had 
in 1911 more than 30,000 inhabitants by 2,421,346, so that in 
the thirty-nine years the population of the rest of France, which 
is far from being exclusively rural, decreased by 856,740. The 
decrease in the rural population must have been at least 2^ 
millions. The number of towns with more than 30,000 and less 
than 50,000 inhabitants rose from twenty in 1872 to forty-one 
in 1911, that of towns with more than 50,000 and less than 
100,000 from fourteen to twenty -four, and the number of towns 
with 100,000 inhabitants or more from nine to fifteen. In 
1906-1911 the increase of population in the department of the 
Seine alone (305,424) was nearly as great as the increase in the 
whole of France (349,264). The aggregate population of the 
Seine and of the seventy-nine provincial towns with more than 
30,000 inhabitants increased in 1906-1911 by 656,149—306,885 
more than the increase in the whole of France. Between 1901 



SMALL PROPERTY 223 

been taken since 1911, but it is certain that the 
exodus has continued, and the Director of Statistics, 
M. March, considers that it is likely to continue. 
One reason of it is compulsory military service : 
the young rustics during their two or three years 
in the barracks get a taste for town life and many 
of them refuse to return to the country. But a 
more important reason is a growing disinclination 
for an intolerable life of dull and ceaseless toil. 
That disinclination is both intelligible and reason- 
able, and is partly the result of improved education 
and wider intellectual interests. Whatever the 
poets may say, the occupation of making holes in 
the ground is not an interesting one and has a 
deadening effect on the intelligence. The pictures 
that Guy de Maupassant, Flaubert, Emile Zola, 
Octave Mirbeau, and other French writers have 
given us of French rural life are not universally 
true, but they are true nevertheless. 

The majority of French farms are worked entirely 
by the owner, his wife and family. Only in Nor- 
mandy and other districts where the farms are 
larger are paid labourers employed to any extent, 
and their total number is comparatively small. 

and 1906 the population decreased in fifty -five rural depart- 
ments and increased in thirty-two predominantly urban depart- 
ments ; between 1906 and 1911 it decreased in sixty-four and 
increased in only twenty-three, all departments almost entirely 
urban and industrial. The depopulation of the rural districts 
is also shown by the fact that the number of conamunes with 
less than 400 inhabitants increased between 1906 and 1911 by 
668, whereas the number of communes with more than 400 
but not more than 2,000 inhabitants decreased by 667 ; this 
means that 667 communes passed from the latter into the 
former category. In 1911 there were 33,520 communes — more 
that eleven-twelfths of the communes of France — with a 
population not exceeding 2,000, of which 16,028 had not more 
than 400 inhabitants ; 174 communes had not more than fifty 
inhabitants; 1,191 more than fifty, but not more than 100; 
4,970 more than 100, but not more than 200 ; 5,361 more than 
200 but not more than 300 ; 4,332 from 300 to 400. 



224 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

The members of a peasant farmer's family 
work much harder than any EngUsh agricultural 
labourer, not one of whom would consent to be 
treated by an employer as the sons and daughters 
of a peasant farmer are treated by their parents. 
In the majority of cases the sons and daughters 
until they marry work for their clothes, board, and 
lodging only and have little or no money at their 
own disposal. When the son marries, he brings 
his wife to live in his father's house and is admitted 
to partnership, unless the position of the family 
permits him to have a farm of his own ; sometimes 
a family has two small farms, in which case the 
son may take one of them. As for the daughters, 
until they marry they are nothing but drudges, and 
the drudgery continues after their marriage, for 
they have to take their share of the work on their 
husbands' farms. In a country house in which I 
was staying some years ago I asked a housemaid, 
who was the daughter of a peasant farmer, why she 
had left her home for domestic service. She told 
me that it was because she found the work intoler- 
ably hard, and she explained that in the summer 
she rose at sunrise, worked in the fields all day 
until sunset, and, when she returned home, had 
various domestic duties which sometimes occupied 
her until long past midnight. It is not surprising 
that the younger generation is getting tired of a 
life like this and that young men and women are 
leaving the country for the towns in ever-increasing 
numbers- Before the war, then, French agriculture 
was already menaced by a serious deficiency of 
labour, and the war has made matters worse. I 
have already said that M. March in his report on 
the population in February, 1919, estimated that 
the male population in France between the ages of 
sixteen and sixty-five will not exceed 10,300,000 in 



SMALL PROPERTY 225 

1935 — a diminution of two millions on the figures 
of the last census.- M. March also pointed out that 
the rural districts would inevitably suffer the most, 
and indeed would probably bear almost the whole 
burden of the diminution, for the gaps in the towns 
are likely to be filled by immigrants from the 
country, which will thus be more depopulated than 
ever. The diminution in the number of men 
between the ages of eighteen and fifty is, of course, 
proportionately greater.^ The losses of the rural 
population in the war — killed and permanently dis- 
abled — must have been at least a million, and if 
the exodus from the country into the towns was as 
great between 1911 and 1914 as it was in the pre- 
ceding five years — it is believed to have been 
greater — French agriculture is faced with an 
immediate loss of about 1,500,000 men on its popu- 
lation of 1911, and a still greater one in the near 
future. This means ruin if the present system 
continues without modification. 

The only possible immediate remedy seems to me 
a vast scheme of State-aided co-operation. The 
farmers in a given district should agree to 
work all their farms together and the State should 
provide an abundant supply of machinery to be 
hired out to them. The general use of modern 
agricultural machinery would very much reduce the 
amount of labour required. But I confess that I 
see little hope of any such scheme, for I know of 
no politicians capable of organising or even initiat- 
ing it ; most of them do not even seem to realise 

1 See page 50. 

2 Military service begins at the age of twenty, and men remain 
liable to be called under the colours until the age of forty-eight ; 
but during the war recruits were called up at eighteen, and 
men who were under forty-eight at the beginning of the war 
were retained under the colours until the end, although some of 
them were by then in their fifty-second year. 

Q 



226 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

that there is any problem to solve. What is really 
wanted is an autonomous national organisation for 
dealing with the matter, directed by men of prac- 
tical knowledge and free from the paralysing grasp 
of the bureaucracy. But there is little chance of 
getting it. The rulers of France, with their greatest 
national industry, their most valuable national 
asset, in imminent danger of shipwreck, have been 
giving all their attention to securing the Saar coal- 
fields and prohibiting imports for the benefit of a 
few industrial magnates. It is, no doubt, because 
the peasants themselves had begun to realise the 
difficulties which face the present agricultural 
system and because they had begun to feel the pinch 
that they were turning towards Socialism during 
the last few years before the war. There is reason 
to believe that that tendency is increasing; it is at 
least probable that revolutionary feeling exists to 
some extent among the peasants that have served 
in the war, as it certainly does among the urban 
soldiers, but there is no means at present of forming 
a definite opinion on the subject. During the war 
those that were left behind on the land have been 
harder worked than ever, but their profits have also 
been large ; on the other hand they have been com- 
pelled to allow a considerable quantity of land to 
go out of cultivation, and in the war zone the 
peasants have, of course, suffered as much as every- 
body else. Efforts were made early in the war to 
induce women and girls from the towns to work on 
the land, but they failed completely. The women 
of the peasantry were heroic and worked harder 
than ever, but French agricultural production could 
not have been maintained at all without the help of 
German prisoners. As it was, the production of 
corn was reduced by one Half. Parliament 
during the war Has continueH the traditional 



SMALL^ PROPERTY 227 

policy of unjustly lavouring the peasants at 
the expense of the urban population in order 
to obtain their support against the proletariat. 
Not only have incomes derived from agricul- 
ture been entirely exempted from income tax 
and from the tax on excess war profits, but 
agriculturists have even been exempted from the 
provisions of the law against profiteering — a formal 
rather than a material advantage, it is true, for 
the law is more or less inoperative and is never 
likely to be seriously enforced. It remains to be 
seen whether these sops will induce the peasants 
once more to support the bourgeoisie against the 
proletariat. 

One of the most serious consequences to France 
of peasant proprietorship is the policy of Protec- 
tion, which continues chiefly by reason of agricul- 
tural support. French agriculture need not fear 
Free Trade if its methods were modern, but it is 
probable that the peasant proprietor with his in- 
adequate resources and antiquated methods would 
not be able to face foreign competition in normal 
conditions. He could, of course, face it in present 
conditions, for the rest of the world has too much 
need of all its food to export much into France. 
One of the greatest scandals of the war was the 
maintenance of import duties on food, although 
France could no longer for the moment produce 
all the food that she required and prices would in 
any case have been extremely high without being 
artificially increased. At any time import duties 
on food are indefensible and they are of course the 
reason why the cost of food is always higher in 
France than in England. The proletariat, which 
has been consistently sacrificed to the bourgeoisie 
and to the peasants by every regime that has 
existed in France since the Revolution and by the 

Q 2 



228 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

Third Republic more than any, will not much 
longer consent to be taxed for the benefit of the 
agricultural industry. But Free Trade would 
involve a radical change in the system and methods 
of agriculture. That is another reason for making 
the change, for which there are so many reasons. 
The very existence of French agriculture depends 
on it. 

The effect of small property on character is of 
course particularly marked in the case of the 
peasants, with whom the avarice that has spread 
to the bourgeoisie originated. That avarice is the 
besetting sin of the peasant is universally admitted, 
and readers of Guy de Maupassant know that it is 
sometimes carried to extreme lengths. But I 
would say again by way of caution that it is not 
universal, and that it is more prevalent among 
some of the races that make up the French people 
than among others. Guy de Maupassant's stories 
are all about Normandy, and the closeness of the 
Norman peasant is proverbial throughout France; 
he is not typical of the French peasants as a whole. 
An English friend who was running a hospital in 
Ariege during the whole of the war tells me that 
she found the peasants extremely generous — very 
different in that respect from the bourgeoisie. This 
is not, of course, an isolated case; generosity will 
be found among peasants everywhere. But it 
remains true that their characters have been 
damaged in too many cases by property. They 
are inclined to excessive mistrust and suspicion, 
but, strangely enough, although they are afraid 
to trust their money to the Government savings 
bank or to invest it in sound industrial enterprises, 
they are always ready to entrust it to any 
swindling company promoter who promises them 
ten per cent. ; that is the secret of the invari- 



SMALL PROPERTY 229 

able success of wild-cat company promoting in 
France. It is the inevitable nemesis of excessive 
suspicion. 

But, whatever their faults may be, there is some- 
thing very attractive about the French peasants. 
I have come into close contact with them during 
several stays of considerable length in country 
districts, and the more I know them the better I 
like them. They have many great qualities, con- 
spicuous among which is their sound good sense in 
most matters. Their sense of realities is refreshing. 
A serious illness compelled me to spend three 
months in Touraine in 1916, and I saw a great deal 
of the peasants. Naturally, like everybody else, 
they talked about the war, and I used to let them 
talk without expressing my opinions. It was amus- 
ing to notice how they always began with the usual 
patriotic cliches, and only when they got to know 
one better said what they really thought, which 
was that no result of the war could ever make it 
worth while. Perhaps their point of view was rather 
materialist, even terre-a-terre, but I found that 
point of view refreshing after the surfeit of 
idealism to which we were being treated by way 
of justifying wholesale slaughter. The peasants, 
not being ideologists, were less indifferent to the 
massacre of young men than most of the bour- 
geoisie — especially the women and old men — 
seemed to be ; they knew that the death of a young 
man is a monstrosity the horror of which is not 
diminished by any religious or patriotic sophism. 
Not once have I heard a peasant say that a man 
killed in the war was better off or that he was 
happy to die for his country. They often said 
that the war ought to be stopped, but they never 
thought of revolting against it; they accepted it 
with the patient endurance with which they accept 



230 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

their daily toil and the buffets of Nature. But a 
very large proportion of them refused to subscribe 
to the war loans because their sons at the Front 
wrote to them that they would be prolonging the 
war if they did so, and they themselves recognised 
the justice of the argument. I was told by a sub- 
prefect that not a penny had been subscribed to a 
particular war loan by the peasants in his adminis- 
trative area. The French peasants have always 
been on the side of peace. The Chauvinism of 
France in the nineteenth century was really the 
Chauvinism of Paris, which was always able to 
control the country by means of the centralised 
administration. The peasants voted for Louis- 
Napoleon Bonaparte in 1848 because they believed 
that he was in favour of peace and were afraid of 
the bellicose tendencies of the Parisian democracy ; 
when their hopes were deceived by the policy of 
Napoleon III, they turned against the Empire, and 
in 1871 they again voted for peace against the 
Parisian democracy. They care very little about 
politics, and are always disposed to support the 
existing regime provided that it gives them peace 
and leaves them alone to attend to their own 
affairs. Since the Third Republic had done that up 
to 1914 they were Republicans to a man; even in 
Brittany, where the majority of the peasants vote 
Royalist, they do so chiefly by tradition, and would 
turn round at once if they thought that the Royalist 
cause had the smallest chance of success. The great 
majority of the peasants are not religious, even 
though they may go to Mass or at least use the 
church for baptisms, first communions, marriages 
and burials ; at heart they are Rationalists, but 
they have often a considerable element of super- 
stition, much of it pre-Christian. Even the external 
practice of religion is rapidly declining in the rural 



SMALL PROPERTY 231 

districts and the proportion of avowed Free- 
thinkers is steadily increasing. It is naturally in 
the most prosperous districts that the intelligence 
of the peasants is highest ; their lives are less hard, 
and they are not so constantly preoccupied by the 
problem of existence. Life is easiest and happiest 
in the wine-growing districts. With an economic 
system that will remove the necessity of thrift and 
methods that will reduce the present excessive 
labour and give more leisure, the agricultural popu- 
lation of France will be able to develop to the full 
its great qualities and will be an invaluable factor 
in the life of the nation. One almost hesitates to 
hope for it more education, for, after the experience 
of the war, one begins to doubt whether higher 
education is really an advantage, at any rate as it 
is at present understood. For the intellectuals, in- 
stead of showing an example of reasonableness to 
the others, have been, as a rule, the worst of all. No 
peasant has talked such nonsense as has been 
talked and written by distinguished philosophers, 
eminent men of science, learned professors, and 
members of the French Academy. 

As I have said, the chief hope of France at 
present seems to me to lie in the proletariat, the 
one class that has escaped from the demoralising 
influence of property. I learned to know the 
Parisian proletariat as I never had known it before 
during those terrible weeks of 1914 before the battle 
of the Marne. When Paris was threatened I sent 
my family away and went to live temporarily in a 
popular quarter. The bourgeois quarter in which 
I lived was entirely deserted except by the con- 
cierges and had become intolerable and also very 
inconvenient, all the ordinary means of communica- 
tion having been suspended. In those days the 
sense of common danger drew together those who 



232 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

had remained in Paris, and we became almost like 
one large family. Perfect strangers spoke to one 
another in the street ; formality and convention dis- 
appeared. I was thus brought into close contact 
with the proletariat and I shall never, so long as 
I live, forget their admirable attitude in those days 
of tension. It was one of stoic calm. Some of the 
few bourgeois that had not gone to Bordeaux or 
elsewhere were talking wildly of burning Paris 
rather than allow it to fall into the hands of the 
Germans, of defending the streets inch by inch, 
and so on. I never once heard rodomontade of that 
sort from the mouth of a man or woman of the 
proletariat. They were intensely pessimistic and 
convinced that Paris would almost certainly be 
occupied by the Germans. They felt that they had 
been deserted by the Government, which in fact 
went away much earlier than was necessary, but 
they simply accepted the situation and made the 
best of it. And all their best qualities came out. 
In the few days before the flight to Bordeaux there 
was an atmosphere of nervosity and suspicion. 
After the lying communiques which had concealed 
the French defeats and made the public believe that 
the French Army was still resisting successfully 
near the frontier, the sudden announcement that 
the Germans were close to Amiens caused a 
momentary panic. The wildest rumours circulated 
through Paris — stories of Generals being shot for 
treason and every kind of improbable fiction. All 
this went away with the Government and the bour- 
geoisie, and the people of Paris became perfectly 
calm. 

The French proletariat has always been greatly 
influenced by ideas. During the first half of the 
nineteenth century it was the later revolutionary 
idea of wars for democracy, of a crusade to set up 



SMALL PROPERTY 233 

democracy all over Europe by force of arms. That 
idea is now dead ; if any remnant of it lingered, 
experience of the latest war for democracy 'has 
killed it. Its place has been taken by the idea of 
Internationalism. Throughout the war, in spite of 
the defection of many leaders, that idea has been 
maintained and peace finds it stronger than ever. 
All the organisations of the proletariat protes'^ed 
unanimously and at once against peace terms which 
belied the professions of the Allied Governments 
during the war. Never since the Revolution has 
the revolutionary spirit died out in the French 
proletariat, in which there is more disinterested 
devotion to a cause than in any other class. When- 
ever the Third Republic has been threatened, it is 
the proletariat that has saved it, not because it 
satisfied its aspirations, but because it was, at any 
rate, a step towards democracy. The level of intel- 
ligence in the proletariat is high; there is a great 
respect for intellect and a growing desire for know- 
ledge. There is nothing of which the French 
Socialist workman is more proud than the fact that 
Anatole France is a "comrade " — in other words, 
a member of the Socialist Party. Nevertheless, 
there is in the proletariat a bitter hatred of the 
bourgeoisie which is shared by all that is best in 
the bourgeoisie itself. This is natural, for the 
French proletariat, a minority in a country of pro- 
perty owners, has been the Cinderella of France. 
There are men of remarkable ability in the Socialist 
Party and the Trade Unions. Jaures, who was the 
son of a peasant, was the greatest statesman of 
the Third Republic, if not of contemporary Europe. 
It would be invidious to mention the living by 
name ; I am proud to count among my friends some 
of the leaders of French Socialism and Trade 
Unionism, and I have had the opportunity of 



234 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

appreciating their qualities. There are among 
them many cool heads and dispassionate judg- 
ments. Without a knowledge of the proletariat 
one cannot know the true France. 

In the bourgeoisie there is still a strong phalanx 
of intellectuals that have not succumbed to the 
madness of the war. Side by side with Anatole 
France stand younger writers, such as Henri 
Barbusse, ready to join with the proletariat in the 
struggle for freedom. They have many supporters 
in the professional, literary, and artistic classes and 
even here and there in other sections of the bour- 
geoisie. Those of the lower bourgeoisie that live 
wholly or mainly on their earnings are beginning 
to discover that their interests are more closely 
allied to those of the proletariat than to those of 
the capitalist class. Hence the remarkable move- 
ment among them towards Trade Unionism. The 
minor Government employees and the elementary 
teachers are among the most revolutionary classes 
in France and have successfully asserted their 
right to organise. 

Such are the respective situations of the various 
classes in France at this moment, when the greatest 
struggle that the country has ever known since the 
Revolution seems to be impending — a struggle to 
overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie, which has 
been the ruling class for more than a century. 



CHAPTER VII 

SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM, AND STATE CAPITALISM 

" State Capitalism (Etatisxne) is the organisation of the 
labour of the community by the State, the Government. 
Socialism is the organisation of the labour of the community 
by the workers grouped in statutory associations {associations 
de droit public)." — Emile Vandervelde. 

Even more than other countries France is in 
need of Socialism, for the power of money and the 
love of money are effects of which the cause is the 
private ownership of the means of production ; the 
effects can be got rid of only by suppressing the 
cause. France has also need of Socialism to enable 
her to fulfil her mission in the world. The qualities 
of the French people do not fit them to become a 
great industrial nation; they have the money- 
saving but not the money-making capacity. 
Even if their business methods were modernised, 
as they should be in any case, they would never 
hold their own in the industrial struggle with 
countries like England, Germany, and the United 
States. Further, if international arrangements 
remain unaltered, France will inevitably sink to 
the rank of a second-class Power, by reason of her 
terrible losses in the war, from which she has 
suffered more than any other country. She is now 
adding to a colonial empire already inflated beyond 
her strength and to a great extent unprofitable on 

236 



236 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

account of her colonial policy. This policy of reck- 
less expansion is likely to prove ruinous to a country 
bled white by the war and faced with appalling 
financial problems. If the burden of armaments 
is to continue — and it must continue unless there be 
a radical change of policy — it is hard to see how 
France can ever recover herself. The salvation of 
France would be in a system of international 
Socialism which would, on the one hand, free every 
country from the risk of aggression, and, on the 
other, by suppressing economic frontiers, enable 
every country to lead the life and practise the forms 
of production best suited to its natural conditions 
and to the characteristics of its inhabitants. France 
would then have no need to keep up an army and 
navy, to aim at becoming a great industrial country, 
or to seek for more and more territorial possessions 
in order to provide markets for protected industries. 
She could devote herself to the development of her 
natural resources, which will provide her with 
ample wealth, to the production of works of art and 
objects of luxury, which has always been her prin- 
cipal industry, and to the pursuit of her intellectual 
mission, which is in danger of being stifled in 
present conditions. France has often been called 
the modern Athens; she should remember that 
Athens fell through a desire for conquest and 
expansion. 

But there is more than one kind of Socialism, 
or rather there is more than one way of organising 
a Socialist society. It might be a system of State 
monopolies administered by a highly centralised 
bureaucracy with industrial conscription and every 
citizen in the receipt of the same salary from the 
State. Such a system is not likely to be adopted 
in France. The French people has had too bitter 
an experience of bureaucracy and State monopolies 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 237 

to wish to extend them ; indeed, it is the identifica- 
tion of SociaHsm with bureaucracy and State 
monopolies that has led so many advanced thinkers 
and revolutionaries in France to reject it. This is 
the "reformist " conception of Socialism, of which 
M. Millerand was once the apostle, which seeks to 
solve the social problem by gradually bringing pro- 
duction under the control of the State. We know 
that theory in England : one begins with municipal 
gas and water supplies, goes on to the nationalisa- 
tion of mines and railways, and then the State 
takes over one industry after the other until at 
last we wake up one fine morning to find that we 
are living in a Socialist community without having 
suspected it. This theory, which is really etatiste 
rather than Socialist, is very much discounted in 
France at present, and French Socialism is becom- 
ing more and more anti-etatiste, that is to say, 
is returning tp the conceptions of Marx and Engels, 
who declared it to be the object of Socialism to 
abolish the State and to substitute for it the "free 
federation of all men." They were not thereby 
advocating anarchism, but merely the suppression 
of authority in favour of organisation. At its 
national congress in April 1919, the French 
Socialist Party definitely pronounced itself in 
favour of revolutionary Socialism to be attained by 
the dictatorship of the proletariat, as against the 
reformist theory. The great majority of the party 
decided to support reforms so long as the capitalist 
system continues, but that is quite a different 
matter from the reformist conception; the reforms 
are advocated as palliatives of existing conditions, 
not as steps towards Socialism, and they by no 
means necessarily consist in an increase of State 
monopolies. Many French Socialists are opposed 
to all State monopolies in present conditions. 



238 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

M. Emile Vandervelde, without sharing their 
opinion, inchnes to the system of autonomous 
administration with representatives of the workmen 
for such State monopohes as may be desirable.^ 
One of the strongest objections to State monopohes 
is, of course, the claim that the employees of the 
State cannot be allowed to strike. In a country 
with conscription, the Government has the power 
to break any strike in a public service by mobilising 
the employees, as M. Briand broke the French 
railway strike in 1910. In that case the only alter- 
native to submission is mutiny, that is to say> 
revolution. It is not at all certain that even a 
Socialist State would allow its employees to strike, 
and a system of State Socialism, which is more 
accurately called State Capitalism, would make the 
workers the slaves of a bureaucracy. To such a 
system French Trade Unionism is unanimously 
opposed, and nearly all French Socialists agree 
with M. Jules Guesde that "the nationalisation of 
private industries by the bourgeois State is not 
Socialism, has nothing to do with Socialism," and 
does not simplify the task of Socialism, but rather 
the contrary. For Socialism involves the entire 
abolition of the wage system and the management 
of industry by the workers. "Etatisme," says 
M. Vandervelde, "is the organisation of the labour 
of the community by the State, the Government. 
Socialism is the organisation of the labour of the 
community by the workers grouped in statutory 
associations (associations de droit pubh'c)."^ 
And, as M. Vandervelde adds, the former of these 
systems does not necessarily involve any change in 
the relations of the classes. 

The objection to Etatisme in France is not, how- 

1 " Le Socialisme centre I'Etat," Chapters II.-IV. 

2 Op. cit., p. 164. 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 239 

ever, based merely on theoretical considerations; 
it is, as I have said, the result of bitter experience. 
For the French public services, whether partially 
or wholly under the control of the State, are 
lamentably inefficient, and as for the State mono- 
polies, they are a curse to the country. The rail- 
ways are not a State monopoly; the permanent 
ways belong to the State, but only one system 
is directly worked by it, the ethers being- conceded 
to private companies for a term of years, at the end 
of which they revert to the State, which has 
then the choice of either renewing the conces- 
sions or taking over the systems at a valua- 
tion.^ So far as the railways are concerned, 
the State, therefore, is in competition with private 
companies, but there is very little railway competi- 
tion in France, the lines having been laid down in 
such a way as to avoid overlapping as much as 
possible ; there are few places between which there 
is more than one route. The system directly 
worked by the State was considerably enlarged in 
1910 by the purchase of the Western Railway of 
France before the period of its concession had 
expired. This purchase was, as has been said, 
opposed by Jules Guesde and a certain number of 
strict Marxists, but it was supported by Jaures 
and the majority of the Socialist Parliamentary 

^ The concessions last from forty to fifty years. Most of them 
were renewed in 1883 and the conventions made with the railway 
companies by M. Re5rnial on November 20, 1883, now regulate 
their relations with the State. The State repays to the companies 
by annuities the cost of construction, less £1,000 a kilometre, 
and the cost of rolhng stock. It also guarantees the share- 
holders a minimum dividend of four per cent. This " garantie 
d'int^rets " dates from the Second Empire when the great 
railway companies were formed ; if a railway be worked at a 
loss, as has often happened, it involves a heavy expense to the 
State. The land occupied by the railways belongs to the 
companies. 



240 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

Party. It was an extremely bad bargain for the 
State, which paid the shareholders of the railway 
company several times the market value of their 
property. The Western Railway, which was the 
oldest in Fra,nce, had for years been a bye word. 
The slowness of its trains and their unpunctuality 
were notorious, and, not long before its purchase 
by the State, the passengers of a morning suburban 
train into Paris were so exasperated at having been 
kept waiting half an hour or more outside St. 
Lazare station — an almost daily occurrence — that 
they wrecked the station as a protest when they 
at last arrived there. As the purchase of the 
Western Railway had been proposed and discussed 
for some years before it was actually accomplished, 
and as in any case the concession had not many 
years to run, the directors had spent as little money 
as they possibly could and even necessary repairs 
had been neglected. The permanent way was in 
so disgraceful a condition that it was hardly safe 
to travel on it at a rate so fast as forty miles an 
hour and it has since had to be entirely relaid; 
the stations were beginning to fall to ruin, and the 
rolling stock was only fit to be scrapped. Such was 
the condition of the engines that they were con- 
stantly breaking down, especially as, for reasons 
of economy, the trains were usually too long and 
heavy for a single engine. The boat-train between 
Paris and Dieppe rarely got through without a 
breakdown, which meant the delay of an hour or 
so. It was for this worthless property that the 
State paid an enormous sum, which made the pur- 
chase a godsend to the shareholders. The purchase 
of the Western Railway by the State was almost 
a necessity, since it was becoming a public danger, 
but the price paid was a public scandal. The capital 
expenditure involved by the necessity of relaying 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 241 

the permanent way, rebuilding the stations, re- 
placing the rolling stock, and generally making the 
system workable, will in the end, with the purchase 
money, amount to more than it would have cost 
to construct and equip a new railway, and the 
Western Railway must for many years be run at 
a heavy loss to the taxpayers. It is too soon to 
form an opinion about the State administration of 
the Western Railway, for the five years of war have 
put a stop to the work of transformation, the manu- 
facture of new rolling stock, etc., and, like all other 
French railways, the Western Railway has a great 
deal of leeway to make up, but in the four years 
between the purchase and the outbreak of the war 
there was a great improvement on the previous 
management and there can be no doubt that it 
will be continued. But the comparison has to be 
made, not with the old Western Railway, which 
was the worst in France, but with the other great 
private railway companies. It cannot be said that 
the old State Railway was in any way superior to 
the P.L.M., the Eastern Railway, or the Northern 
Railway; indeed the latter had better train 
services. The one advantage of the old State Rail- 
way was that it ran third class carriages on all the 
trains, whereas on the other lines express trains 
are almost invariably first and second class, or 
even first class only. After the purchase of tTie 
Western Railway the practice of having no third 
class on express trains was, however, continued 
until the war, since when there have been no 
express trains. 

The State exercises much more control over the 
railways belonging to private companies than was 
the ease in England before the war — naturally 
so, since it subsidises them. The State, for 
instance, fixes the railway fares and the time- 

R 



242 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

tables have to be submitted to the Govern- 
ment, which has the power to revise them and to 
insist on more trains being run. But this control is 
not exercised to any great extent to the advantage 
of the public. The fares are, it is true, lower than 
in England, the third class rate before the war 
having been about four-fifths of a penny a mile, 
the second class not quite half as much again, and 
the first class fares double the third class. At 
present the pre-war fares are increased 25 per cent. 
But third class passengers almost always have to 
travel by slow trains, so that people with small 
incomes are often obliged to travel second class. 
This is a monstrous state of affairs in a republican 
country ; if French railway companies have not the 
sense to recognise, as the English companies have, 
that it would pay them to cater for third class 
passengers, the Government of the Republic ought 
to use its powers to make them do so. People to 
whom, for business or other reasons, time is of 
importance are often obliged to travel first class; 
for instance, the only train by which it is possible 
to reach Marseilles from Paris within the day is 
first class only. Moreover, a long journey in a 
third class carriage in France is a painful experi- 
ence; most of the third class carriages have no 
cushions at all and many of them are little better 
than cattle-trucks. Except on a very few big 
express trains, the second class and often even the 
first class carriages are not so comfortable as the 
third class on English railways ; a third class dining 
car is unknown in France. The railway carriages, 
as well as being uncomfortable, are often in bad 
condition and usually dirty. The " trains de luxe," 
which run in normal times between France and 
other countries, are not at all luxurious, and give 
no value for the heavy charge that is made in 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 243 

addition to the first class fare. They consist as a rule 
merely of sleeping cars and a dining car ; a sleeping 
car in the daytime is less comfortable than an 
ordinary first class carriage. The charge for sleep- 
ing accommodation on most of the French railways 
is very high; between Paris and Marseilles, for 
instance, it is forty francs (32s.), in addition to the 
first class fare. On the whole, the French railways, 
although better than the Italian, are inferior in 
every way to those of England, Germany, Belgium, 
Switzerland, and several other countries, and the 
State Railway is not the best of them. Railways, 
being of the nature of a natural monopoly, seem 
particularly adapted to State ownership, but, if 
they are owned by the State, they should, like the 
Swiss railways, be under autonomous management, 
responsible to the Government, but independent of 
the bureaucracy, and the workers should, as is not 
the case in Switzerland, be represented on the 
managing bodies. 

The tramway and omnibus services in France 
are not as a rule public monopolies ; in Paris they 
are in the hand? of private companies which have 
concessions from the municipality. But they, like 
the railways, are more under the control of the ^^:- 
bureaucracy than the English services of the same /^ 
kind, to which they are much inferior. In Paris the 
services,^ except on one or two lines of tramway, 
are not nearly as frequent as they ought to be, 
with the result that many of the lines do not pay ; 
when they do not pay, the service is often reduced, 
with the result that the loss becomes greater than 
ever. When the concession for the Paris tramways 
last expired, an offer for it was made by an 
American syndicate, which, unfortunately for 
Paris, did not obtain it. The representative of the 
syndicate undertook, if he obtained the concession, 

R 2 



244 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

to provide a much more frequent service and 
explained to the representatives of the Municipal 
Council of Paris that it would pay to do so; if, he 
said, it was found that a line did not pay with 
trams running every five minutes, the way to make 
it pay was to run them every two minutes. He 
was, of course, right; people in Paris get so dis- 
gusted with waiting for a tram or an omnibus, 
with the prospect of not being able to find a place 
in it when it at last arrives, that they take a cab 
if they can possibly afford it. On the Passy-Bourse 
line of motor 'buses before the war it was almost 
impossible to get a seat at the stopping-place 
nearest to my home, and I have often waited a 
quarter of an hour in vain ; the reason was that the 
'buses ran only about every five minutes and the 
service was quite insufficient. For motives of 
economy even in normal times two tramcars are 
run together on many lines, and, as the motor is 
only sufficiently powerful to draw a single car, the 
pace is much reduced and breakdowns are frequent. 
The deficiencies of all these public services are the 
result of the penny wise and pound foolish policy 
— the pettifogging petit bourgeois spirit — which 
does so much harm in private business. 

That policy and that spirit are just as evident in 
the postal service, which is lamentably inefficient. 
There are not enough post offices in Paris or in any 
large town, and, while useless officials are multiplied 
elsewhere, the post offices are insufficiently staffed. 
Paris has a complete system of pneumatic 'tubes for 
the transmission of express letters — hence known 
as " pneumatiques " — from one post office to 
another. The " pneumatiques " are handed over 
the counter at a post office or else put in special 
letter boxes supposed to be cleared every quarter 
of an hour. If there were no delay in their despatch 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 245 

or delivery they would reach their destination in a 
very short time, and in fact fifteen years ago one 
could count on the delivery of a " pneumatique " 
in three-quarters of an hour. As time went on, 
however, the use of this convenient method of 
correspondence enormously increased, but little or 
no increase was made in the number of messengers, 
with the result that there is now a long delay before 
delivery, and in the last year before the war a 
" pneumatique " already took from two to three 
hours in transmission, that is to say, about the 
time taken by an ordinary letter in London. Even 
then it was quicker than a telegram, which I have 
known to take five or six hours in peace time to 
go from one part of Paris to another. Letters also 
are slow, their delivery is irregular, and they are 
lost more often than they ought to be. As for the 
telephone service, it is even worse in France than 
in England, where, by the way, it has not improved 
since it was taken over by the State. The postal 
service is hardly one to be left in private hands, 
but my experience is that the American cable com- 
panies are more efficient and give better facilities 
than any State telegraph service, probably because 
of the competition between them, and I see no 
reason why the carrying of letters should be a 
monopoly.^ The defects of the French post office 

* The war has shown us in England that even so apparently- 
harmless a State monopoly as that of letter-carrying may be 
insidiously exploited against individual liberty, for we have 
learned that letters have been secretly opened bj'- a Cabinet 
Noir in such a way as to prevent the fact from being detected. 
This system, once begun, is likely to be continued, for it is 
undoubtedly useful to the police and may help in the detection 
of crime, but it is better that crime should be undetected than 
that the private correspondence of every citizen should be at 
the mercy of policemen. The system has always existed in 
France, and that is one of the reasons why the French State 
so jealously guards its monopoly and will not even allow a 



246 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

administration are universally recognised in France 
and are the subject of bitter complaints, but 
nothing can move the inert mass of officialdom and 
matters grow worse rather than better. The remedy 
is no doubt autonomous administration ; there must 
be a complete separation between the organ of 
government and the organs of administration. It 
is only just to say that there are certain postal 
facilities in France that might well be adopted in 
England : the money order post card or letter card 
is much the most convenient method of transmit- 
ting money by post ; the telephone message is also 
very convenient and is now the most rapid method 
of communication in Paris, and the letter-telegram 
is cheap and very useful.^ 

If the State in France is inefficient and incom- 
petent in such matters as the railways and the 
postal service, it is even more so when it tries its 
hand at production. The State monopolies in 
tobacco and matches could hardly be equalled as 
object lessons of the pernicious results of a bureau- 
cratic State Capitalism, and have done more than 
anything else to inspire the French people with a 
horror of the State management of industry. Every 
visitor to France knows that French matches are 

District Messenger Service in Paris. The monopoly of letter- 
carrying is in itself an vmnecessary infringement of liberty ; if 
the State can do it better than anybody else, as it probably can, 
why should it fear competition ? 

1 Money sent by a money order post card or letter card is paid 
to the addressee by the postman who delivers the card. A 
telephone message is a message telephoned to the post office 
ne&rest to the address of the person for whom it is intended, 
and thence sent out by telegraph messenger ; it cost fifty centimes 
in Paris before the war, and now costs seventy-five. A letter- 
telegram is a letter dispatched by telegraph after 9 p.m. to any 
telegraph office that is still open, and dehvered by the first 
post in the morning ; it costs only one franc for every hundred 
words, and enables a letter to be dispatched at midnight from 
Paris to Marseilles, for instance, and delivered by the first post. 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 247 

the worst and the dearest in the world ; one might 
be reconciled to paying a penny (three halfpence 
since the war) for sixty common wooden matches 
such as were sold in England before the war for 
twopence or threepence a dozen boxes, if only the 
matches would strike, but half of them usually fail 
to do so. The tobacco monopoly is conducted in 
defiance of the elementary dictates of good sense, 
and tobacco in every form is much dearer than it 
would be if its production were in private hands. 
These monopolies are, of course, used principally 
as methods of obtaining revenue; the supporters 
of a State-Socialist system say that that would not 
be the case under such a system, and that there- 
fore it cannot be judged by these examples. It is 
true that, if the main object of the French State 
were not to fleece the consumer, it could provide 
good matches and good tobacco at reasonable 
prices, but there are other evils in State monopoly 
which would not be got rid of even if revenue were 
not the first aim. The tobacco manufactured by 
the French Government is all grown on French 
territory, and is therefore all of one kind. For my 
part I prefer it to any other, and habitually smoke 
"Caporal " cigarettes when I can get them, but 
there are many people that prefer Oriental or Vir- 
ginian tobacco. Yet the State obstinately refuses 
to provide for the taste of such people by manu- 
facturing Turkish, Egyptian, or Virginian cigar- 
ettes; before the war it had a contract with the 
Ottoman Hegie, which has the tobacco monopoly 
in Turkey, and imported its cigarettes, but they 
were very dear. Other cigarettes are imported 
from England, Egypt and America, but as the 
import duty is enormous, their prices are prohibi- 
tive ; common Virginian cigarettes cost something 
like eight shillings a hundred even before the war 



248 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

and are now much dearer. Havana cigars are also 
imported and are naturally dear ; some of the cheap 
cigars made in France are just smokable. As for 
pipe tobacco, it is impossible to get any kind except 
the French. No private person is allowed to import 
tobacco in any form except by special permission 
from the Director of Customs; the permission in- 
volves elaborate formalities and the maximum 
amount that any single person may import in one 
year is a kilogramme (about 2 lb. 3 oz.). As the 
importer had, even before the war, to pay duty at 
the rate of nearly 80s. a lb., the permission is rarely 
demanded. The whole policy of the State is to 
force the consumer to buy French tobacco, whether 
he likes it or not. This is not all : if the Govern- 
ment happens to have large stocks of some par- 
ticular brand of tobacco or cigarettes to be worked 
off, it refuses to supply the tobacconists, who are 
all State officials, with other kinds, so that smokers 
cannot even get the particular kind of French 
tobacco to which they are accustomed. There is 
yet another grave abuse. Legally only the tobac- 
conists appointed by the Government can sell 
tobacco retail in any form, but it is of course 
impossible to prevent restaurants and cafes from 
supplying their customers and the Government 
winks at their doing so. As they are obliged to 
obtain their supplies at the tobacconist's and pay 
the ordinary prices, they put on a profit and are 
not content with a small one ; some of them charge 
two or three times the legal price and the public 
is fleeced more than ever. There are constant pro- 
tests in the Press against this illegality, which could 
easily be stopped by legalising the sale in restau- 
rants and cafes, allowing them a discount and 
forcing them to sell at the legal prices or even a 
little more; but that would interfere with the 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 249 

precious monopoly of the tobacconists, so nothing 
is done. In France it is always the consumer who 
is sacrificed. 

During the war the abuses in connection with the 
sale of tobacco became scandalous and illegal 
profiteering became general. It was almost impos- 
sible to obtain cigars, cigarettes, or tobacco at a 
tobacco shop, but they were to be had at restaur- 
ants or cafes, and even from private individuals, at 
prices several times as high as those at which they 
could legally be sold. The Government made no 
attempt to stop these illegal practices, and smokers 
who could not afford the fancy prices demanded by 
the profiteers had to go without tobacco or stand in 
a queue once a week outside a tobacco shop to 
get half an ounce of tobacco or a packet of ten 
cigarettes. Yet it is said that the production of the 
State factories was greater during the war than in 
normal times. Such are the blessings of State 
monopoly. 

Pawnbroking in France is a municipal monopoly, 
and there is something to be said for making it one. 
The interest charged is no lower than in England, 
and the proportion of the value of an article lent on 
it is usually not so high, but at least the business is V/ 
honestly conducted and the valuations are just. '^^ 
Moreover, an article deposited at the " Mont de 
Piete " can never be sold so long as the owner con- 
tinues to pay the annual interest on the sum lent, 
but the owner can at any time ask for it to be sold 
bjT^ auction, in which case he receives the balance of 
the price that it fetches, after repayment of prin- 
cipal and interest. Should the article be sold in 
default of payment of interest, the owner can also 
claim the balance. In fact, the " Mont de Piet^ " 
is not run for profit, and this is an enormous advan- 
tage ; indeed, the strongest opponents of State mono- 



250 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

polies can admit that pawnbroking is one of the very 
few businesses which ought to be run by the State. 
During the war the advantage was greater than 
ever, for the sale of articles for non-payment of in- 
terest was entirely suspended and the suspension has 
not yet been removed. Articles pawned five years 
ago, on which no interest has been paid, can still be 
redeemed on payment of the arrears of interest. 
But even here the doctrine that the State or a public 
body must never take any risk causes an absurd 
anomaly. The " Mont de Piete " will not accept 
any work of art such as a painting or a piece of 
sculpture, and on other objects that have a special 
artistic or collecting value will allow only the in- 
trinsic value. For instance, a piece of valuable old 
silver is valued at the current rate of silver and an 
old tapestry or a Persian carpet is valued as if it were 
modem. The result is a system of illicit 
and illegal pawning at which the State is obliged to 
wink, for the owner of a valuable picture or tapestry 
cannot reasonably be prevented from borrowing 
money on it. This facilitates the disposal of stolen 
works of art, for the lender of money on a 
work of art will never give any information, because 
he has acted illegally, and the police have no means 
of giving warning of the theft of works of art to 
persons likely to lend money on them, or of tracing 
them if they are pawned. The consequence is that, 
nothing being easier than to dispose of a stolen 
work of art without detection, persons to whom 
works of art have been entrusted by their owners 
for sale have a much greater temptation to pawn 
them than in England and often yield to it. There 
are various devices for lending money on articles 
without technically infringing the law, such as a 
sale under a contract giving the seller the right to 
buy back the article at a certain price within a 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 251 

given time. If the State undertakes pawnbroking — 
and I have given the reasons why it is desirable that 
it should do so — it should not make restrictions of 
this kind. It may safely be said that private pawn- 
brokers in England, who lend money on pictures, 
do not take much risk ; they employ expert valuers 
and leave a large margin for depreciation. The 
State could do the same.^ If the doctrine that the 
State can take no risk were applied to industry in 
general, the consequences of State monopoly would 
indeed be appalling. 

It may be, as I have said, that a Socialist State 
owning the means of production would manage its 
monopolies better than the State monopolies are 
managed in France, but they would never be really 
satisfactory. Most of the vices that are so patent 
in the working of French monopolies are inherent in 
monopoly itself and would never be eradicated in 
any economic conditions. The owner of a mono- 
poly has the consumers at his mercy; he can force 
them to buy what he likes, not what they like, and 
impose upon them goods of an inferior quality. He 
will abuse his power as inevitably as an absolute 
ruler abuses it; monopoly is economic despotism 
and is as bad as any form of despotism. Enligh- 
tened and benevolent despotism might be the best 
form of government if it were possible to find an 
enlightened and benevolent despot, but it is not, 
for the necessary qualification for such a position 
is intellectual and moral perfection. Even if a 
man could be found combining in himself the genius 
of Napoleon and Pericles with the unselfishness and 
disinterestedness of St. Francis of Assisi, he would 

^ If the State declines to take any risk, it should legalise 
private pawnbroking in the objects on which it refl^ses to lend 
money, or even general private pawnbroking under proper 
regulations in competition with itself. 



252 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

be demoralised by the exercise of arbitrary power. 
And arbitrary power is just as demoralising in 
economic as in political matters. A Socialist 
State would be just as much inclined as a capitalist 
State to impose home products on the consumer — 
perhaps even more so, since it would be more 
directly interested in discouraging the purchase of 
imported products. A State with the monopoly of 
production might even try to make the consumer buy 
what it believed to be good for him rather than what 
he himself wanted ; indeed that tendency has already 
manifested itself in the prohibition of alcoholic 
drinks in the United States, where there is a move- 
ment to prohibit the manufacture and sale of to- 
bacco. Human nature being what it is, a system of 
State Socialism monopolising the whole of produc- 
tion would inevitably end in a slavery more galling, 
even if less pernicious, than the economic slavery 
produced by the present capitalist system, because 
its manifestations would be more evident to every- 
body. Our lives would be regulated by an omni- 
potent bureaucracy which would decide what and 
how much we were to eat and drink, how we should 
dress ourselves, what sort of houses we should live 
in and how they should be furnished. We should 
all be called at the same time in the morning by a 
sanitary official who would deposit at our door a 
sanitary breakfast, and we should go at the 
same hour to a sanitary factory or work- 
shop and take our lunch in a sanitary 
restaurant where the menu would be arranged 
on strict sanitary principles. The belief that 
abuses of bureaucracy and State monopoly 
could be checked by democracy is illusory; we 
know by experience that parliaments have no effec- 
tive control over the bureaucracy even now when 
the action of the bureaucracy is restricted to a 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 253 

comparatively limited field. If the whole of pro- 
duction were put under the control of the bureau- 
cracy, it would be impossible to devise any means 
of keeping it in check. No elected body, still less 
the general public, could keep an eye on the in- 
numerable and intricate details of the production 
and distribution of a whole nation; even if the 
elected bodies sat continuously all the year round 
for twelve hours a day, they would not have the 
time to deal with the matter. Moreover, the mem- 
bers of the Administration would always defend 
the bureaucrats and make out a good case for them 
by tendencious information which it would be very 
difficult to control. Probably the people would 
sooner or later rebel and the result would be a 
disastrous reaction and the complete discredit of 
Socialism. 

Another inherent vice of State monopoly is that 
it removes the economic incentive to individual in- 
dustry and efficiency. The bureaucrats that 
manage a State monopoly know that it will make 
no difference to them whether they manage it ill 
or well, whether the returns are small or large, 
whether the quality of the products is good or bad. 
The managers of the French match monopoly have 
no interest in providing the public with good 
matches ; the public is obliged to buy the bad ones 
because it can get no others. A private manufac- 
turer with no monopoly who persisted in supplying 
such matches at such a price would have to close 
down his factory in a few months. The managers 
of the French tobacco monopoly have no interest in 
improving the quality of the goods that they supply 
or in searching for new methods or new brands ; the 
consumer is at their mercy and no amount of 
energy, initiative, or resource would better their 
own position. There is no reason for supposing that 



254 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

a Socialist bureaucracy would be any better than 
any other. Minerals, like land, are a natural mono- 
poly, for they cannot be manufactured and their 
quantity is limited ; that being so, it is desirable 
that the monopoly should be public and not private, 
but it should be under autonomous management, in 
which the workers should have a voice. ^ But in ordin- 
ary production competition is necessary and Social- 
ism cannot dispense with it; it can only alter its 
character. Nor can Socialism dispense with the eco- 
nomic incentive ; if all citizens^ were paid the same 
income, no matter what they did or whether they 
did anything, it would be impossible to find any- 
body to do the disagreeable or routine work and 
industrial conscription, that is to say, forced 
labour, would become inevitable. Forced labour 
is slavery. It is hardly worth while to revolu- 
tionise the whole social system in order that the 
wage-slaves of the capitalists may become the wage- 
slaves of a bureaucracy. A Socialist community 
will get the disagreeable work done by paying extra 
for it. There is no objection from the Socialist 
point of view to a certain inequality of income; 
what is objectionable in the present system is not 
so much the fact that one man has a larger income 
than another as the power that is given to 
certain individuals by the ownership of the 
means of production to force the community 
to pay tribute to them and to their descen- 
dants for ever. Once that power is abolished 
by the socialisation of the means of produc- 
tion, one man may earn more than another 
without any injurious results, and it will always be 

^ An excellent system has been proposed by Mr. Robert 
Smillie for the management of the English mines xmder national 
ownership by representatives of the community, the experts 
and the workmen. 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 255 

essential to efficiency that the amount of a man's 
earnings should to some extent depend on the 
quality of his work — all the more essential in a 
society which will guarantee to every worker the 
minimum necessary for a decent livelihood. The 
most valuable work in the world always has been 
and always will be done for its own sake, not for 
the sake of gain, and even under a system of State 
Socialism with equal incomes for everybody there 
would be no lack of poets, artists, inventors or men 
of science. But the ordinary work of production 
would suffer, for it is just that work which 
needs the economic incentive, especially if it 
be, as it often must be, monotonous or even 
disagreeable. 

It is because ail this is beginning to be recognised 
in France that there is in the proletariat and among 
Socialists so strong a reaction against Etatisme. 
That reaction began to find expression at the end 
of the last century in the Syndicalist theory pro- 
pounded by the leaders of French Trade Unionism. 
This theory is to be found in germ in the pamphlet 
of M. Sorel, " L'Avenir Socialiste des Syndicats," 
published in 1898. It is that production should 
be entirely in the hands of the respective Trade 
Unions (" Syndicats ") — that the railways should 
belong to the railway workers, the mines to the 
miners, and so on. The duty of the proletariat, 
M. Sorel maintained, was to destroy entirely the 
existing political organisation and to deprive the 
State and the local authorities of all their func- 
tions, one after the other, in order to transfer them 
to the Trade Unions; "the future of Socialism," 
he said, " consists in the autonomous development 
of the Trade Unions." M. Sorel maintained that 
the Syndicalist theory was a logical deduction from 
the principles of Karl Marx, and there is no doubt 



256 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

that it has more affinity with those principles than 
has the theory of a bureaucratic State SociaUsm, 
for it aims at " the free federation of all men " ; but 
Marx would not have denied all control over pro- 
duction to the community as a whole, as do the 
Syndicalists. Before M. Sorel published this pam- 
piilet there were already Trade Unionists in France 
hostile to parliamentary methods and opposed to 
the Socialist Party which had been founded by 
Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, but Sorel was the 
first to formulate a definite Syndicalist theory. 
Syndicalism has much in common with the theories 
of Proudhon and Bakounine. The General Con- 
federation of Labour, commonly known as the 
C.G.T., was founded in 1895, but at first it had 
few adherents and its tendencies were not strictly 
defined. French Trade Unions, however, were 
from the first revolutionary in their character ; they 
aimed not merely at improving the condition of 
the workers by raising wages, reducing hours of 
labour, and so on, but at a radical change in the 
whole economic system. From the first also the 
French Trade Unionists were suspicious of parlia- 
mentary action and relied on economic methods 
such as the strike. At the National Congress of 
the Socialist Party held at St, Mande in 1896, M. 
Miller and propounded a programme of State 
Socialist reforms which was accepted by what 
came to be called the " reformist " section of the 
Socialists as distinguished from the definitely re- 
volutionary section led by Jules Guesde. This 
widened the breach between the Trade Unionists 
and the Socialists and the difference between them 
became acute in 1899, when M. Millerand, with the 
approval of the majority of the Socialist Party, 
accepted office in the Waldeck-Rousseau Cabinet. 
A coalition of Guesdists, Anarchists, Blanquists and 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 25^ 

other " anti-etatistes " was formed, which became 
the predominant influence in the General Con- 
federation of Labour. At its congress held at 
Amiens in 1906 the Confederation by an over- 
w^helming majority definitely repudiated parliamen- 
tary methods, adopted the Syndicalist theory, and 
approved of the general strike as the method of 
achieving the social revolution. From that time 
until the outbreak of the war there was a conflict 
between the Socialists and the Syndicalists, which 
sometimes became very bitter and which divided 
the proletariat; some of the Syndicalists attacked 
the parliamentary Socialists more violently than 
the bourgeois. Lagardelle, Pouget, Griffuelhes, 
Sorel and others published in 1907 and 1908 pam- 
phlets in which they set forth the Syndicalist 
theories, attacked " democratism " and even the 
principles of Marx, and preached " direct action." 
Whereas Sorel in 1898 had departed very little 
from the doctrines of Marx and Engels, the Syndi- 
calists now became definitely anarchist or " liber- 
taire." 

In saying that the Syndicalists were anarchist I 
do not mean that they necessarily advocated vio- 
lence or preached the use of bombs and assassina- 
tion ; they were anarchist in the sense that they ob- 
jected to all government, but, in fact, they were 
not so far from Marx and Engels as some of them 
imagined, for they admitted the necessity of organi- 
sation, that is to say, administration. Their quar- 
rel with revolutionary Socialists in this regard was 
little more than verbal ; both wanted to substitute 
the administration of things for the government of 
men. The real difference between the Socialists 
and the Syndicalists was that the latter would 
entrust administration entirely to the Trade Unions 
or Syndicates of workers in each trade, and left 

s 



258 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

no room for any control by the community as a 
whole. The term " libertaire " is really more 
accurate than "anarchist " as applied to the 
Syndicalists, and the best English equivalent for 
" libertaire '" is " liberal " — not " Liberal," which 
means a member of a particular political party. 
Liberalism, in the true sense of the term, is 
essentially and always anti-etatiste. Syndicalism 
is non-parliamentary, non-religious, and non- 
patriotic. The leading Syndicalists were not, of 
course, individualist anarchists but communist- 
anarchists, which is only another name for liberal 
Socialists as opposed to State Socialists; the term 
" communism " is used in France in the sense of 
" collectivism," as it was by Marx and Engels, and 
as it is in Russia. There was in the Syndicalist 
ranks a small group of individualist anarchists, 
which had its centre in M. Gustave Herve's paper, 
La Guerre Sociale. M. Herve himself was a mem- 
ber of the Socialist Party, but his theories at that 
time were more anarchist than socialist and he 
was extremely anti-patriotic. But he never had 
clear ideas on any subject and his character is 
admirably summed up in the remark of a friend, 
who once said to him : " Tu dis toujours ce que tu 
penses, mon ami, mais tu ne penses pas " (You 
always say what you think, my friend, but you 
don't think). Inconsequent, impulsive, and inor- 
dinately vain, M. Herve aimed above all at being 
conspicuous, and his subsequent conversion to 
ultra-patriotic Nationalism was not ait all surpris- 
ing; I prophesied it more than ten years ago. M. 
Herve himself has always been disinterested in 
money matters and the desire of gain has never 
been a factor in his political development; he is a 
man of simple tastes who can do with very little 
money- But that was not the case with all the 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 259 

members of the group that gathered round him, on 
whom his erratic and capricious character had a 
very bad influence ; he gave them a love of violent 
language often with little meaning and under his 
guidance they acquired the habit of speaking with- 
out thinking. Most of them drifted into indivi- 
dualist anarchism and thence, sooner or later, into 
ordinary criminality. The doctrine of " individual 
expropriation " easily became the excuse for theft 
and even burglary, and false coining was adopted 
as a revolutionary method, at first on the pretext 
of providing money for the '^ cause," but before 
long for less disinterested motives. During a cer- 
tain period the Guerre Sociale lived chiefly on 
the proceeds of coining; I do not know that M. 
Herv6 was aware of the fact, but he probably made 
as little inquiry into the sources of the funds as 
did M. Cardinal into the sources of his income. 
The exploits of Bonnot and Gamier, who had begun 
as individualist anarchists and degenerated into 
criminals, certainly not of an ordinary type, dis- 
credited individualist anarchism. Nearly all the 
young men belonging to the group of the Guerre 
Sociale turned out badly. One of the best known 
was the brilliant and unfortunate Miguel 
Almereyda, who was ruined by his expensive tastes 
and consequent need of money, and who eventually 
died in prison in mysterious circumstances. There 
was not the smallest evidence that he was guilty 
of treason, or that he knowingly received money 
from a German source, but it is certain that he 
was not particular where he got it from and 
was ready to adapt his politics to suit the persons 
that found it. 

This little group was but an excrescence on 
French Syndicalism and, if I have said so much 
about it, it is only because its importance has often 

s 2 



260 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

been exaggerated and it is desirable to reduce it 
to its true proportions. Most of the Syndicalist 
leaders were men with disinterested motives and 
some of them were men of great capacity and intelli- 
gence. The great utility of Syndicalism lay in its 
repudiation of State monopoly and its insistence on 
the necessity of preparing the proletariat to use 
the power if and when it could get it. Too many 
Socialists have been disposed to imagine that all 
that was necessary was to capture the State either 
by parliamentary action or other methods and that 
the establishment of a Socialist society would fol- 
low as a matter of course. Lagardelle, who, 
although a prominent Syndicalist, never ceased to 
be a member of the Socialist party, said with truth 
in his famous discussion with Jules Guesde at the 
Socialist Congress at Nancy, in 1907, that a Socialist 
society would not issue ready-made from a revolu- 
tion or from the capture of the machinery of the 
State. The workmen, he said, could not be ready 
at a moment's notice to replace the capitalists 
unless they had previously been prepared and a 
long preparation would be necessary. The prole- 
tariat must create with their own hands a whole 
system of institutions intended to replace the bour- 
geois institutions and he looked to the Trade Unions 
to accomplish that task.^ This is sound sense : it 
is absurd to suppose that, if the proletariat were 
not already organised with a view to taking over 
production, the mere assumption of political power 
by a few Socialist politicians could effect any real 
change. A Socialist Parliament with a Socialist 
Government could not establish Socialism ; society 

^ An important step in this direction has now been taken 
by the formation of an " Economic Council of Labour " composed 
of representatives of the C.G.T. and Government servants, 
engineers, teachers and others agreeing with its aims. 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 261 

can never be transformed by Act of Parlia- 
ment. 

Simultaneously with the growth of Syndicalism 
the Socialist party became less and less reformist 
and more and more revolutionary. Jaures, who 
had supported M. Millerand at St. Mande in 1896, 
acquiesced in his entry into the Waldeck-Rousseau 
Cabinet chiefly because of the necessity of concen- 
trating all the forces of the Left to defeat the anti- 
Dreyfusards and the Reaction. But when that 
task was accomplished the Socialist party refused 
to continue the policy of participation in a bour- 
geois Government, although it continued to act 
with the Bloc of the Left until 1906. M. Millerand 
had to leave the party, and when MM. Briand, 
Viviani, and Augagneur subsequently accepted 
Ministerial office, they did so without the permis- 
sion of the party and were expelled from it in con- 
sequence. The amalgamation in 1905 of the two 
French Socialist Parties, that led by Jaures and that 
led by Jules Guesde, brought together the two ten- 
dencies — the reformist and the revolutionary — and 
under the pressure of Syndicalism, the " unified 
Socialist party," as it was called, gradually aban- 
doned reformism. The event has shown that the 
Syndicalist movement was both necessary and 
valuable, for it saved French Socialism from 
etatisme. The Socialist Party continued to advo- 
cate legal reforms as palliatives of the capitalist 
system, but it refused to follow the reformists in 
making such reforms the whole aim of Socialism 
in the belief that their extension would ultimately 
lead to a Socialist State. The Socialist Party in 
Parliament has, however, continued to attach too 
much importance to the immediate nationalisation 
of certain industries, which might possibly be suit- 
ably converted into public monopolies in a Socialist 



262 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

society, but which the existing State is quite incom- 
petent to manage. It was, in my opinion, a mis- 
take on the part of the majority of the Sociahst 
Deputies to support the purchase by the State of 
the Western Railway of France at a price which 
made the transaction a fraud on the taxpayers. 
When their attempts to get the price reduced had 
failed, they should have refused to take any respon- 
sibility for the purchase. Even since the war the 
Socialist Party in Parliament has demanded that 
the State should take over and run all the munition 
factories, and nationalise the railways, the mines, 
and the mercantile marine. It would certainly 
have been only right to force the owners of the 
munition factories to be content with a salary and 
perhaps a commission on production, but had the 
bureaucracy attempted to run the factories, the 
results would have been disastrous. If the rail- 
ways, the mines, and the mercantile marine were 
converted into State monopolies in present condi- 
tions, they would certainly be grossly mismanaged 
and the discredit would fall on Socialism. The 
French Socialist party would do far more useful 
work and win much more credit if it left State 
monopolies alone and concentrated on such reforms 
as I have ventured to suggest in another chapter.^ 
When we have arrived at a Socialist society it will 
be time enough to consider what industries, if any, 
should be public monopolies. 

The war disintegrated both Socialism and Syndi- 
calism. The majority of the adherents of both 
went at once to the Front and there was a sharp 
division of opinion in regard to the war among 
those who remained behind ; both the Socialist 
Party and the General Confederation of Labour 
were split in two. Curiously enough, the Socialists 
1 See pp. 113-130, 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 263 

and Syndicalists that had been most extreme in 
their internationahsm and even anti-patriotism 
became in many cases the most ardent supporters 
of the war ; they persuaded themselves that it was 
a revolutionary war for the purpose of securing the 
universal triumph of democracy. This attitude was 
an interesting revival of the spirit that animated 
the Parisian Republicans and Revolutionaries from 
1815 to 1870, when they were always clamouring for 
military crusades against monarchies and despot- 
isms. Among the complex causes of the Commune 
of Paris in 1871 was the revolutionary patriotism 
which identified the cause of France with that of 
the Revolution and was disgusted at what it con- 
sidered to be the pusillanimous policy of Thiers 
and the National Assembly. The revival of the 
same spirit among Socialists and Syndicalists in 
1914 was not, therefore, very surprising, especially 
in the case of the older men. But nobody would 
have anticipated the entry into a bourgeois Govern- 
ment for " National Defence " of Jules Guesde, 
who had all his life been the strongest opponent 
of co-operation with bourgeois Governments or par- 
ties, had opposed the opportunism of Jaures, and 
had declared with Karl Marx that the workman 
has no country. There is no reason to doubt the 
sincerity of most of these sudden conversions — or 
reversions — but in some cases Socialists and Syndi- 
calists of military age were induced to give a 
whole-hearted support to the war by a judicious dis- 
tribution of exemptions from military service. 
Nobody was more bellicose than some of the 
'' embusques." 

Until 1917 the supporters of war to the bitter 
end — the " jusqu'auboutistes," as they were called 
— retained the complete control both of the Social- 
ist Party and of the General Confederation of 



264 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

Labour, and were therefore called the " Majori- 
taires," but, as more and more men had to be sent 
back from the Front to the munition factories, the 
strength of the " Minoritaires " or Internationalists 
steadily increased and they were in a majority in 
the rank and file of the Socialist party long 
before they succeeded in capturing the or- 
ganisation, which is now under their control. 
Indeed, the former " majoritaires " with very 
few exceptions, have returned to their old 
principles and policy.^ Both the Socialist Party 
and the General Confederation of Labour are now 
once more definitely internationalist and revolu- 
tionary ; their executives in May 1919 unanimously 
passed a vote of congratulation to the crews of the 
French warships who had hoisted the Red Flag in 
the Black Sea and undertook to defend them by 
every means in their power. 

The war had the effect of bringing the Social- 
ists and Syndicalists together and appeasing their 
differences. The division in their respective ranks 
in regard to the war itself helped to do that, for 
Socialist and Syndicalist "Majoritaires" acted 
together, as did Socialist and Syndicalist " Minori- 
taires." Moreover, the experience of the war has 
led to modifications of theory on both sides. On 
the one hand, as has been said, it has produced 
among the Socialists a strong feeling against 
Etatisme, for during the war France has had ex- 
perience of the complete control by the State of in- 
dustry and commerce, of importation and expor- 
tation no less than of production, and the 

1 At the national congress of the Socialist party in September 
1919 an agreement was arrived at both as to the programme 
and policy of the party. But a considerable minority of the 
Extreme Left held aloof and will be useful in keeping the majority 
up to the mark. 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 265 

experience has not been such as to make 
Etatisme popular. French industry is in the 
hands of a few consortiums of capitaHsts, which 
have become an integral part of the State and to 
which the State has delegated part of its powers. 
The last thing that they and the bureaucrats have 
ever considered is the interest of the wretched con- 
sumer. At the same time, the public money has 
been squandered with reckless disregard of the 
future on the consoling assumption that Germany 
would pay. Side by side with the growing feeling 
against Etatisme has developed the reaction 
against parliamentary methods already mentioned 
in a previous chapter, and an increasing tendency 
to count only or chiefly on direct action. In fact, 
French Socialism, particularly its rank and file, is 
becoming more and more libertaire; it has 
abandoned reformist and State Socialist theories 
and is returning to the conceptions of Marx and 
Engels, modified by recent experience. On the 
other hand, there is a distinct tendency on the part 
of Trade Unionists to modify the theory of pure 
Syndicalism and to recognise that it would put the 
consumer — ^^that is to say, the community as a 
whole — at the mercy of any one group of pro- 
ducers. The time is therefore ripe for a synthesis 
between Socialism and Syndicalism and that syn- 
thesis will be arrived at. The relations between 
the Socialist Party and the General Confederation 
of Labour have again become a little strained, 
chiefly for personal reasons ; but they joined to- 
gether during the war in the Inter-Allied Socialist 
and Labour Conferences, and there is every reason 
to hope that they will unite in the formation of a 
new International. 

Syndicalism, as we have seen, was in its origin 
simply a protest against the reformist tendencies 



266 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

of certain leading Socialists. It can never come to 
terms with State Socialism, but its differences with 
Revolutionary Socialism are entirely concerned 
with questions of method and can easily be ad- 
justed, especially now when the majority of Social- 
ists in France have abandoned all hope of effecting 
anything important by parliamentary action. The 
Commune of Paris — which was the French Soviet — 
will in the future be the model for French Socialist 
action, as Engels said that it should be, and the 
Syndicalists may well rally to it. In the new 
synthesis between Socialism and Syndicalism the 
economic function of the State, or rather of the 
Administration, will be what the Manchester 
Liberals said that it should be — to protect the in- 
terests of the consumer. The State as an organ of 
administration will replace the State as an organ 
of authority; the administration of things will re- 
place the government of men. Some means will 
be found of conciliating the interests of the com- 
munity as a whole with those of each group of pro- 
ducers. That is the principal modification that 
will be necessary in the Syndicalist theory as set 
forth by Sorel in 1898 — the defect of that theory 
was that it ignored the interests of the consumers, 
that is, of the community as a whole. ^ The prin- 
ciples of Socialism and liberalism are not so corii- 
pletely opposed as is commonly thought. There 
has been too violent a reaction in England from the 
doctrines of the Manchester Liberals, who were 
much more right than many Socialists imagine. 
They were right in saying that there should be as 
little government as possible; they were right in 

1 The national congress of the C.G.T. held at Lyons in Septem- 
ber 1919 modified the Syndicalist theory by accepting the 
joint control of industry by producers and consun^ers, This 
reconciles Syndicalism with Marxist Socialism. 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 267 

saying that the only economic function of the State 
is to protect the consumers; even the doctrine of 
laisser-faire has much to be said for it. The State 
has been obliged to intervene to protect the worker 
from the results of the capitalist system, but in 
just and reasonable economic conditions that would 
no longer be necessary. The object of Socialism is 
to give as equal an opportunity as possible to every 
individual; there will never be absolute equality, 
for some individuals will always be more capable 
than others, but, if all start fair, it is to the general 
interest to let the best man win. The mistake of 
the Manchester Liberals lay in thinking that the 
best man would win in existing economic conditions 
and in supposing that in a system of private pro- 
perty liberty could ever be possible for the pro- 
pertyless. Their principles applied to capitalist 
conditions meant misery for the majority of the 
population; Socialist conditions will make their 
application to a great extent possible, for the 
socialisation of the means of production is 
the only method of attaining individualism and 
economic freedom. The opposition of liberals to 
State Socialism is natural and reasonable, for State 
Socialism is as incompatible with liberty as is the 
capitalist system, and the servile State is no im- 
aginary danger. But there is no incompatibility 
between liberalism and revolutionary Socialism. 
They agree in detesting authority, they agree in dis- 
trusting the State, they agree in making liberty the 
supreme ideal — al3solute liberty in the expression 
of opinion, however dangerous, immoral, or blas- 
phemous it may appear to the majority; in other 
matters a liberty necessarily limited only by the 
liberty of others. Socialism as a political creed is 
transitory; liberalism is eternal. For if and when 
a Socialist society is established there will be no 



268 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

need of a Socialist party — ^the question will be no 
longer at issue — but there will always in any 
economic conditions be people that are on the side 
of authority and people that are on the side of 
liberty, those whose tendency is conservative and 
those whose tendency is progressive. Socialism 
might be liberal or anti-liberal, "libertaire" or 
" autoritaire " ; it is much to be hoped tnat it will 
be liberal, and all the signs in France at any rate 
point to that. 

At the very beginning of this book I said that 
there were signs in France that the present regime 
was nearing its end, and I have tried to show what 
those signs are and what are their causes. The 
question is, What will replace the present regime 
should it come to an end ? The discredit into 
which French political institutions, and in particu- 
lar the Parliament, have fallen might lead either to 
reaction or to revolution. If the matter rested 
with the bourgeoisie reaction would be certain. For 
several years before the war the bourgeoisie had 
been becoming more and more reactionary and 
anti-democratic, and this tendency had been par- 
ticularly marked among the intellectuals. Some, 
like Brunetiere and Coppee, turned to the Church 
as the last hope of authority ; others, like Sorel, the 
first apostle of Syndicalism, became Royalists. The 
war has greatly strengthened the reaction. Drey- 
fusards like M. Joseph Reinach and M. Ernest 
Lavisse have vied with M. Maurice Barres and M. 
Maurras in the violence of their Chauvinism and the 
fervour of their patriotic sentiments. The best evi- 
dence of the bourgeois reaction is the proposal 
of the majority of the Paris Municipal Council to 
erect a monument to the late M. Paul Deroulede, 
whose whole life was devoted to the advocacy of a 
war of revenge against Germany, and who W3,s 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 269 

banished for conspiring against the Republic. That 
proposal reveals the fact that in France, as else- 
where, there was a party that wanted war and that 
it was much stronger than was generally supposed 
abroad; indeed, I believe that it included the 
majority of the rentier class. The peasants and the 
proletariat were opposed to war, so were the finan- 
ciers and the bulk of the industrial and commercial 
capitalists not interested in the production of war 
material, but the great metallurgical interest — the 
most powerful capitalist group in France — wanted 
war, and it had a large proportion of the rentiers on 
its side. Above all, it had the enthusiastic 
co-operation of the military interest and the General 
Staff. The great majority of French professional 
officers are reactionaries — a large proportion of 
them belong to the real or imitation noblesse, which 
despises industry and commerce and will not serve 
the Republic in a civil capacity. They hoped that 
the profession of arms might some day give them 
the opportunity of upsetting the Republic and 
they counted on a war as being likely to afford the 
best opportunity. This is no libel on the French 
reactionaries, for the design was openly avowed 
long before 1914 by M. Charles Maurras and other 
reactionary writers. The French militarists and 
reactionaries seemed to have been rendered power- 
less by their defeat in connection with the Dreyfus 
affair, and they became, indeed, unable directly to 
influence French policy; but, as I have said else- 
where, they succeeded in exercising influence in- 
directly through the intermediary of the Govern- 
ment of the Tsar, thanks to the close relations be- 
tween the French and Russian General Staffs. It 
was, for instance, the French General Staff that 
originated the Three Year Service Law of 1918, 
but it was imposed on France by the Russian 



270 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

Government. When M. Viviani formed his first and 
abortive Cabinet after the General Election of 1914, 
M. Paleologue, who was then French Ambassador 
at Petrograd, attended the first Cabinet meeting 
and intimated to it that the Russian Government 
insisted on the maintenance of the Three Year 
Service. This insolent interference in the internal 
affairs of France caused the resignation of M. 
Georges Ponsot and M. Justin Godard, which led to 
the break-up of the Ministry. The Russian Govern- 
ment had then already determined to drag France 
into war ; unhappily, it found in France itself poli- 
ticians and journalists as well as soldiers only too 
willing to acquiesce in its designs. It was not for 
nothing that the Russian Government subsidised 
the Matin, the Figaro and certain other Parisian 
papers. One London paper at least shared in the 
largesse of the Tsar's Government and it is quite 
possible that there were others. The final triumph 
of French and Russian militarism and reaction was 
won at Versailles on January 17, 1913; from that 
day war was certain.^ During the war militarism 
and reaction dominated France, and their domina- 
tion became complete when they succeeded in put- 
ting M. Georges Clemenceau at the head of the 
French Government to carry out a policy in flagrant 
contradiction with the principles that he had pro- 
fessed throughout his long political career. I doubt 
whether the militarists and the reactionaries will 
surrender their power, if they can help it, without 
a struggle. They may take advantage of a moment 
of disorder due to the general discontent and the 
widespread misery that the war has caused in 

^ In the train from Versailles to Paris, on the evening of the 
presidential election, a well-known French writer said : " Diiring 
the septennate of M. Poincar6 we shall have first the Three 
Year Service and then war." 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 271 

France to attempt a coup d^itat. Whether such 
an attempt would succeed depends on the army, 
and I very much doubt whether the army would 
support it ; even if it did succeed, it would not be 
long-lived, and would almost certainly be followed 
by a social revolution. 

I am, however, disposed to think that the revolu- 
tion will come without any intermediary stage. 
The economic and financial situation of France is 
such that no solution is possible except that of re- 
pudiation of the National Debt — and that means 
revolution and the end of the capitalist system. 
It is probably too late to avert revolution by con- 
stitutional and legislative reforms ; the bourgeoisie 
has missed its chance, as did the noblesse of the 
eighteenth century, and the situation of the bour- 
geois Republic is as hopeless as was that of the 
Monarchy^ in 1789. The only possible chance of 
saving itself open to the bourgeoisie is that of imme- 
diately consenting to a large levy on capital, but 
I believe that it is too late even for that to save it, 
and in any case the French bourgeoisie will never 
consent to any pecuniary sacrifice. It is blinded 
by its avarice and egotism. Its representatives in 
Parliament can think of no better method of deal- 
ing with the situation than that of increasing 
indirect taxation in a country where the cost of 
living was in May 1919 four times as high as in 
1910. Once more the bourgeoisie tries to shift the 
financial burden on to the backs of the workers, 
who are already hardly able to exist. Does history 
show any example of more blind, more crass 
stupidity ? If the French bourgeoisie shares the 
fate of the noblesse, it may, indeed, be said to it : 
" Tu I'as voulu, Georges Dandin ! " 

The French Socialist Party has not, of course, 
abandoned parliamentary action. It issued an 



272 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

electoral manifesto in preparation for the General 
Election of 1919, which contained a programme of 
immediate reforms, including an amendment of the 
Constitution. But that very manifesto said that 
reforms v/ere not enough; as I have said in a 
previous chapter, it declared the necessity of a 
social revolution to be organised by the dictator- 
ship of the proletariat. This is an admission that 
Socialism cannot be established by Acts of Parlia- 
ment. If Socialism meant the transference of in- 
dustry to the State, no doubt one industry after 
another might be nationalised by Parliament, but 
it does not mean that. It means the transference 
of the whole of industry to the control of the 
workers. Such a change cannot be effected in a 
piecemeal fashion; it is in itself a revolution and 
can be effected only by revolutionary methods. 
Persons calling themselves Socialists that are 
afraid of the word " revolution " are not Socialists 
but merely Etatistes. " Not revolution, but 
evolution," we are sometimes told, as if anything 
could be evolved out of its opposite. Socialism 
may be right or wrong, but, in any case, it is the 
exact opposite of capitalism and can no more be 
evolved out of it than a Republic can be evolved 
out of a Monarchy. The Monarchy must be 
abolished before a Republic can be set up, and 
capitalism must be abolished before Socialism can 
be established. Capitalism will never be abolished 
by an Act of Parliament. Seeing the enormous 
pull that the moneyed interests must always have 
in an election in our present social conditions, if 
only because elections cost so much money, I 
doubt whether a majority could ever be obtained at 
the polls for the abolition of capitalism. And if it 
were, the majority would be paralysed by the par- 
liamentary machine and stifled in procedure and 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 273 

standing orders. While time was being wasted over 
these formalities the capitalist classes would be 
organising forcible resistance. They would not 
restrict themselves to constitutional methods ; they 
never have when their interests were seriously 
threatened. The men who used force to repress 
the revolutions in Russia and Hungary would 
not shrink from the use of force to repress a social 
revolution in their own country, even if it were 
being made by constitutional methods. But it 
never can be : a constitutionalist Socialist is a con- 
tradiction in terms ; Socialists are out to destroy 
the whole constitution, economic and political, of 
existing society If and when the proletariat 
decides to act, it will not employ the cumber- 
some machinery of the parliamentary system 
when it has other and far more effective means at 
its disposal. The transformation of society is much 
more than a mere political change. Socialism in- 
volves the substitution of an economic for the poli- 
tical system of social organisation — of social for 
political democracy — and it can be brought about 
only by economic methods, not by political ones 

Marx and Engels and the French Socialist Party 
are right : the dictatorship of the proletariat is the 
only method by which Socialism can ever be estab- 
lished. I know that the phrase " dictatorship of the 
proletariat " makes the hair even of some worthy 
persons imagining themselves to be Socialists 
stand on end, but they will have to get used to it. 
And really there is nothing very terrible about it. 
It does not mean the permanent oppression of one 
class of the community by another, but is merely 
a temporary measure for effecting the transition 
from a capitalist to a socialist society — nothing 
more, in fact, than the application of the common- 
sense principle that a revolution can be made only 

T 



274 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

by people that believe in it and want it. In the 
nature of things the dictatorship of the proletariat 
cannot be permanent, for in a socialist society the 
proletariat will cease to exist; there will be no 
proletariat and no bourgeoisie, but only one class, 
that of workers with hand or brain. The phrase 
" dictatorship of the proletariat " must not be 
taken in too literal a sense, for the term " prole- 
tariat " in this connection includes all that are on 
the side of the proletariat. Lenin himself never 
belonged to the proletariat and, although I am a 
bourgeois, I hope not only to live to see the dicta- 
torship of the proletariat, but also to have the 
honour of assisting in it. It means, in fact, no 
more than that during the transition from one 
state of society to another — ^that is to say, during 
the revolutionary period when rapid decisions will 
be necessary and time cannot be wasted on useless 
discussion — the anti-revolutionary minority must 
be excluded from the control of affairs, as the 
Royalists were excluded from the National Con- 
vention. There will, no doubt, be discussions and 
differences of opinion among the revolutionaries — 
probably too many of them — and the majority will 
have to decide, but time cannot be spent on dis- 
cussing the revolution itself with people that are 
opposed to it. Moreover, although a Socialist 
society will not allow persons that will not work to 
starve, it will certainly not give them political 
rights, unless, of course, they are incapacitated 
from working by age or any other cause. ^ 

Even if it be true that a majority for the aboli- 

1 The alleged atrocities committed in Russia are not a necessary 
result of the dictatorship of the proletariat. And, as Mr. Arthur 
Ransome has said, before forming an opinion on what has 
happened in Russia, it is desirable to " demand something more 
to go upon than second-hand reports of wholly irrelevant 
atrocities committed by one side or the other, and often by 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 275 

tion of capitalism could not be obtained at a general 
election, that does not prove that the majority of 
the proletariat would be opposed to Socialism. 
There is never a straight issue at a general election 
— the issues are always confused — and its result is 
less an indication of the real feeling of the majority 
of the country than a tribute to the ability of par- 
ticular party wire-pullers. The English general 
election of December 1918 proved nothing except 
that Mr. Lloyd George is a very clever man; it 
certainly did not indicate the feeling of the coun- 
try. One must not confuse the representative 
system with democracy — even mere political demo- 
cracy. The present political system in England and 
France is not democratic even in the purely political 
sense ; it is a device for persuading the masses of the 
people that they are ruling themselves when, in 
fact, they are being ruled by the capitalists. Some- 
body — was it Jean-Jacques Rousseau ? — said that 

neither one side nor the other, but by irresponsible scoundrels 
who, in the natural turmoil of the greatest convulsion of our 
civilisation, escape temporarily here and there from any kind 
of control." (" Six Weeks in Russia in 1919," Introduction, 
p. vi.). Mr. Ransome himself has given us something more. It 
is no doubt true that there have been indefensible interferences 
with individual hberty both in Russia and Himgary, such as the 
refusal to allow any newspaper to be published without a licence 
from the Administration. But to describe such practices as 
" Marxist " is absurd ; there is not a word in the writings of 
Karl Marx to justify thera, nor are they in the least essential 
to the dictatorship of the proletariat as Marx and Engels under- 
stood it. They are the result of a deplorable Jacobin spirit on 
the part of Russian and Hungarian revolutionary leaders, and 
they are Ukely to be as fatal to any revolution that persists in them 
as were Jacobin methods to the French Revolution. Not only is 
it indefensible on the part of Socialists to imitate the methods 
of despotic Governments, but it is also a profound mistake, as 
past experience has shown. Social democracy will never be 
successful unless it remains true to the principle of liberty. 
" Liberty, Equality, Fraternity " are no doubt ideological 
abstractions in the mouth of a defender of bourgeois society, 
but Socialism can make them realities. 

T 2 



276 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

the English were free once in seven years and the 
rest of the time they were slaves. That is no longer 
quite true, for they are now free once in five years, 
but even then their freedom is limited to a choice 
between two or three gentlemen nominated by some 
caucus or other. Not only is there in the intervals 
no sort of popular control over Parliament, but the 
control of Parliament over the Executive is rapidly 
disappearing and the government of England is 
becoming more and more bureaucratic. 

Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly true that, if and 
when there is a social revolution in France or any- 
where else, it will be the work of a minority, like 
all great movements in the history of the world ; 
but it will be successful only if it has the acquies- 
cence of the majority. When has the majority 
ever done anything of itself ? M. Alfred Loisy 
speaks somewhere of " those who, while thinking 
with the Church, also think for her " ; the majority 
will always be guided by those who, while thinking 
with it, also think for it. That is what makes 
democracy possible. Renan said that the only thing 
that gave him any conception of infinity was 
human stupidity; if we are to wait for changes 
until the majority of human beings begin to think 
for themselves we shall wait till doomsday. But 
it is a great mistake to suppose that any particular 
class is necessarily more intelligent than another; 
the bourgeoisie is no more intelligent in the mass 
than the proletariat, and an oligarchy exercised by 
a class is an absurdity. Nothing could be less de- 
fensible than a property qualification; where does 
one find more stupid people than among successful 
business men ? Everything that has been done in 
the world has been done by individuals; the 
whole of progress depends on the triumph of indivi- 
dual intelligence over collective stupidity. One of 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 277 

the strongest arguments for Socialism is that by 
removing the unfair advantage given to some in- 
dividuals — often among the most stupid — by the 
possession of property and the handicap placed on 
other individuals — sometimes among the most 
intelligent — by the fact that they possess none, it 
seems likely to facilitate the triumph of the in- 
telligent. 

French Socialists and the French proletariat in 
general are, then, now convinced that only by 
direct action can they obtain what they want; in 
fact, the proletariat has never obtained anything of 
much importance except by direct action or the 
threat of it. And has not Sir Edward Carson pro- 
vided a valuable object-lesson of its effectiveness ? 
But direct action does not in the least imply vio- 
lence and bloodshed. Revolution, if we consult the 
dictionary, means " complete change, turning up- 
side down, great reversal of conditions, fundamental 
reconstruction," and it may be accomplished with- 
out bloodshed or violence. The modern revo- 
lutionary method is the general strike, not 
barricades in the street. That is the form that direct 
action will take, and, if the general strike be pro- 
perly organised and the strikers hold, it can 
accomplish in a few days without bloodshed or 
violence what it would take years or generations to 
accomplish by constitutional methods, if they could 
ever accomplish it. It is, unfortunately, possible, 
if not probable, that a revolution will not be per- 
fectly peaceful, for the simple reason that the 
capitalist class is sure to use violence, if it can, to 
repress it. Whether and how far it will be able to 
use it depends on the soldiers ; the more completely 
the proletariat is organised, the less likelihood there 
will be of violence. The object of the general strike 
is to destroy the capitalist system — it is the destruc- 



278 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

tive side of the revolution which must come first; 
the constructive work of the revolution will be done 
by the dictatorship of the proletariat, which will 
follow. 

In the introduction to the German translation, 
published in 1891, of his book, " La Guerre civile 
en France," Engels said : " The German Philistines 
are always filled with a holy terror at the words : 
dictatorship of the proletariat. Would you like to 
know, gentlemen, what that dictatorship means ? 
Look at the Commune of Paris. That was the dic- 
tatorship of the proletariat." I do not doubt, as I 
have said before, that the Paris Commune will be 
the model on which, in the event of a revolution in 
France, the dictatorship of the proletariat will be 
organised, with the necessary modification of repre- 
sentation by occupations. The autonomous Com- 
mune is the natural unit from which the Federative 
Communist Republic can be built up. We have 
failed to secure even political democracy be- 
cause we have begun at the wrong end — 
with the State. Democracy must begin from 
the source, must start with the small local 
organisation, and the larger organisation must 
be formed by federating the smaller ones. That, 
in fact, is how the beginnings of democracy hap- 
pened : the first embryo democracies were free 
towns, and it was a misfortune for the world when 
the free towns of Europe were absorbed into States 
and Empires. The States and Empires have grudg- 
ingly restored a certain amount of local liberty, 
varying in different countries, but the natural evolu- 
lution of democracy was checked. In England the 
course of events was different : we invented national 
representative government, which other countries 
have imitated. It did valuable work in its time, 
but it is now out of date. A new beginning has to 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 279 

be made : we must return to the free town and start 
with local liberty, building up from that interna- 
tional social democracy. The province will be a fede- 
ration of free communes, the country a federation of 
free provinces, and the civilised world a federation 
of free countries. The commune will be completely 
autonomous in matters that concern itself alone ; 
the province completely autonomous in matters that 
concern the collective interests of the communes of 
which it is composed ; the country completely auto- 
nomous in matters that touch the collective in- 
terests of all its provinces. Neither will have any 
power outside its own borders; the country, like 
the province and the commune, will be an adminis- 
trative area and no more. There will be boun- 
daries, but no more frontiers, political or 
economic. Socialism will destroy, not only the 
capitalist system, but also the Sovereign In- 
dependent State claiming to be a law unto 
itself and to exercise authority even outside its 
own borders. Only on that condition will it ever 
be possible to get rid of war. Just as the absolute 
independence of the individual would be fatal to 
any social organisation, so the absolute indepen- 
dence of the State is fatal to international comity. 
Nationalism, political and economic, must be 
abolished if we want permanent peace, and Social- 
ism proposes to abolish it. One of the excuses most 
often used by Governments for interference in other 
countries — that of the necessity of protecting their 
own subjects abroad — would be removed by inter- 
national Socialism, for everybody would be the 
citizen of the place where he happened to be living, 
that is to say, the citizen of the world. The official 
commentary on the Covenant of the Holy Alliance 
called the League of Nations, said that " if the 
nations of the future are in the main selfish, grasp- 



280 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

ing and bellicose, no instrument or machinery will 
restrain them." One might as well say — no doubt 
our remote forefathers did say — the same thing 
about individuals. Such an assertion is a denial 
of the possibility of any sort of social organisation 
and abandons the world to anarchy. There is no 
intrinsic impossibility in preventing war; the diffi- 
culty is that too many of those who profess to will 
the end do not will the means. Human beings, or 
many of them, will always be selfish, grasping, and 
bellicose — collectively even more than individually, 
for the collectivity is always inferior to the indivi- 
dual — and the way to prevent war is to arrange 
such conditions as to make it impossible. War 
would not be possible in a system of international 
Socialism in which armaments would be sup- 
pressed, the Sovereign Independent State destroyed 
and economic frontiers abolished by universal Free 
Trade ; the countries would be so dependent on one 
another that none of them could afford to go to 
war. War between France and Germany would be- 
come as unthinkable as war between Lyons and Mar- 
seilles. It is the growing conviction that this is the 
only way of preventing war that has been one of 
the chief factors in the increase of Socialist and 
revolutionary opinions in France; the conversions 
to Socialism at the Front were innumerable. 

Not idealism — or rather ideology — but realism 
is the basis of the revolutionary movement in 
France. Modern Socialism, especially in France, 
is not based on any belief in the perfectibility of 
human nature, but on a frank recognition of its 
defects. It does not count on a change of hearts. 
The people who say that nothing can be done by 
international organisation or changed economic 
conditions are not realists, but either fools or hum- 
bugs ; in the latter case they say that nothing can 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 281 

be done because it is not to their interest that the 
necessary measures should be taken. In fact, 
nothing can be done to improve the world except 
by economic measures ; the only way in which 
human nature can be modified or ever has been 
modified is by food, climate and economic con- 
ditions. Morality, as anybody can see that 
chooses to use his eyes, is chiefly a matter of 
climate and environment, in so far as it is not a 
matter of good or bad taste. Climate and environ- 
ment have altered racial characteristics and pro- 
duced new races. ^ The economic interpretation of 
history remains the true one ; every great move- 
ment in history has had an economic cause — I do 
not say as its only cause, but the economic cause 
always predominates. This truth is perhaps more 
readily grasped by the rationalist and realist 
French mind than by our more sentimental men- 
tality, and that is one of the chief reasons why 
Socialism is gaining ground in France. The French 
proletariat has been sickened of ideology by that 
well-meaning bourgeois ideologist, Mr. Woodrow 
Wilson, whose ignominious failure is an example of •- 
the lamentable consequences of ill-inform.ed senti- 
mentalism and windy rhetoric, especially when 
they are combined with vanity and ambition. It 
is said that one of the reasons why Mr. Wilson 
yielded was that he feared a revolution in France 
if he retired from the Peace Conference. I should 

^ The most striking example of the superiority of climate 
and environment to race is, of course, the United States of 
America. In spite of the fact that the population is a mixture 
of all the European races, a very definite racial type has been 
evolved, which has certain physical characteristics of the original 
inhabitants of North America, although there is hardly any Red 
Indian blood in the European population. These physical 
resemblances prove that the same conditions produce the same 
(Pffects on persons of totallj^ different ra^es. 



282 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

have supposed that the exigencies of his masters, 
the American capitaUsts, had more to do with it, 
but if Mr. Wilson was really influenced by the con- 
sideration mentioned, he is even less clear-sighted 
than I take him to be. The one chance of avert- 
ing a revolution was to show that bourgeois society 
was not completely bankrupt, that it was capable 
of rising to the occasion. Had Mr. Wilson retired 
from the Peace Conference or, if necessary, resigned 
the Presidency of the United States, rather than 
compromise on matters of principle, he would not 
only have made a name in history, but would also 
have acquired immence influence on the masses of 
the people in France and elsewhere and they would 
have been willing to listen to him. As it is, his 
failure appears to the French proletariat as the 
final bankruptcy of bourgeois society. The capi- 
talist Governments have shown that they are in- 
capable of learning by experience, that they cannot 
free themselves from the old conceptions of abso- 
lute national sovereignty, strategic frontiers and 
territorial safeguards, that they have no vision of 
a new order, no idea of a better organisation of 
the world. They have made a peace treaty on the 
old lines, but, as its authors lacked the knowledge 
and skill of the great diplomatists of the past and 
were hampered by the necessity of paying hypo- 
critical respect to formulas which they had ac- 
cepted but in which they never believed, it is a 
clumsy compromise between contradictory princi- 
ples. Metternich and Talleyrand would have done 
better ; at least they would not have made arrange- 
ments so grotesque as those relating to Dantzig 
and the Saar Valley, of which the former was Mr. 
Wilson's own conception — ^the fact is a measure 
of his capacity as a statesman. Downright annexa- 
tion would have been less dangerous to the peace 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 288 

of Europe than these hybrid solutions. Mr. Wil- 
son's League of Nations, for the sake of which the 
war was prolonged for nearly two years, differs 
from the Holy Alliance of 1815 chiefly in the fact 
that in the present case the small nations are 
harnessed to the chariot wheels of the five Powers 
banded together for the hegemony of the civilised 
world. When the representatives of the capitalist 
Governments signed the peace treaty with Ger- 
many at Versailles on June 28 1919, they signed 
the death-warrant of capitalist society ; and the silly 
journalists that clamoured for what is called in 
America a " treat 'em rough " policy, were digging 
its grave. Blinded by hate, intoxicated by vic- 
tory, learning nothing and forgetting nothing, des- 
titute of a sense of realities, the bourgeoisie of the 
Allied countries has shown the proletariat that it 
is incapable of adapting itself to new conditions 
or of even grasping the data of the problems that 
lie before the world. Nay, it has gone back inst'fead 
of forward : there was more internationalism and 
genuine liberalism in the Whig aristocracy of the 
early nineteenth century; Charles James Fox 
would have made a better peace than did Messrs. 
Wilson, George and Clemenceau. The reason why 
revolution is inevitable is that bourgeois society is 
degenerate and moribund. It refused to be saved 
by Mr. Wilson as it had refused to be saved by 
Lord Lansdowne; it must pay the penalty of its 
obstinate stupidity. 

Although revolution must necessarily be the work 
of a minority, it is improbable that it will originate 
in the conscious determination of the Socialist 
Party or of any other group or individual. The 
forces which are leading to it are beyond the con- 
trol of individuals. What I anticipate in France 
is the sudden expansion into a general revolu- 



284 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

tionary movement of some ordinary strike due to a 
trade dispute. Only the resistance of the General 
Confederation of Labour to the pressure of cer- 
tain Trade Unions and of the rank and file of the 
Trade Unionists prevented such a development of 
the strikes in France in June 1919. The national 
executive of the Metal-workers' Federation actually 
demanded a general strike, and the Metal-workers' 
Federation is the largest and most important Trade 
Union organisation in France. The General Con- 
federation of Labour was vehemently attacked by 
the rank and file for its moderation. M. Dumoulin, 
a member of the executive of the Confederation, 
dealt frankly with the matter in UHumanitS of 
June 21, 1919. The C.G.T. could not, he said, 
allow individual Unions, however powerful, to pre- 
cipitate a general strike or allow itself to be blinded 
by spontaneous impatience and irritation; it must 
await the right moment for action. I do not doubt 
that the C.G.T. was right ; men with such a respon- 
sibility on their shoulders as have the leaders of 
French Trade Unionism may well hesitate to risk a 
movement of such a kind in any conditions that do 
not make its success almost certain. But the 
danger is that the spontaneous impatience and irri- 
tation of the rank and file may overwhelm the 
leaders and precipitate the movement, whether 
they like it or not. That has already occurred in 
the case of individual strikes; nearly all the recent 
strikes both in France and England have been 
spontaneous movements on the part of the rank 
and file, and some of them have taken the Trade 
Union officials by surprise. In France, as in Eng- 
land, the real leaders of the Trade Union move- 
ment are no longer the Trade Union officials, but 
the shop stewards (delegues de Vatelier), and the 
shop stewards in France, as in England, are mostly 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 285 

revolutionary in feeling. In the spring of 1918 I 
was talking in Paris about the feeling of the prole- 
tariat to a distinguished man, not a Socialist, still 
less a revolutionary, who had been director of a 
State armament factory during the greater part of 
the war. He said that the workmen were even 
then in a state bordering on exasperation and that 
there was only one Trade Union leader in whom 
they still had confidence, because he had always 
been opposed to the war; but, he added, " il sera 
deborde " (he will be overwhelmed). In May 
1918 his prophecy was already fulfilled to some 
extent by the general strike of the French munition 
workers, in opposition to the wishes of their Trade 
Union officials, at one of the most critical moments 
of the war; it was primarily a political strike — a 
strike in favour of ending the war. Now the 
exasperation of the rank and file is such that it 
is becoming increasingly difficult for the leaders to 
hold them back and at any moment all the Trade 
Union officials may be overwhelmed. There are 
too many causes of unrest and discontent : the 
failure of the hope of a lasting peace settlement; 
the continuance of conscription and armaments; 
the Allied intervention in Russia and Hungary; 
above all, the appalling cost of living. We have 
seen in a previous chapter that the cost of living is 
to a great extent the result of the deliberate policy 
of the Government of M. Clemenceau, which sacri- 
ficed the consumer to the interests of a few pro- 
fiteers. So did it sacrifice the proletariat to the 
selfishness of the bourgeoisie, Avhich refused to sub- 
mit to an adequate income tax. The French prole- 
tariat and the French peasantry will not consent to 
be reduced to misery for generations in order to pay 
the interest on a national debt of nearly seven 
thousand million pounds. Sooner or later they will 



SS6 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

decide to repudiate that debt, and that will be one 
of the causes of a revolution. France, in fact, is 
insolvent, and the only way out of insolvency is 
bankruptcy. There is intense bitterness at the 
way in which the French people has been deceived 
by successive Governments during the war, which 
have declared one after the other that Germany 
would pay all the cost of the war. M. Klotz 
actually said that so late as the spring of 1919, 
when the peace negotiations were in progress. 
Nobody believed it then, but during the war the 
one answer of the French bourgeois to anybody that 
suggested the desirability of counting the cost was : 
" The Germans will pay." The masses of the 
people, who knew nothing about financial matters, 
were equally deceived, with more excuse, and the 
illusion was one of the chief factors in inducing 
them to allow the war to go on to the bitter end. 
Now they see that Germany cannot pay more than 
a small fraction of the cost of the war and that the 
victory, which has cost so dear in blood and trea- 
sure, is indeed, as M. Clemenceau has said, a 
Pyrrhic victory for France. One of the most 
striking symptoms of a new spirit is the tendency, 
already mentioned, of the salaried bourgeoisie to 
combine with the proletariat. Paris saw in 1919 
the novel spectacle of 25,000 bank clerks on strike 
marching down the Grand Boulevard. A theatrical 
Trade Union has been formed which includes all 
that get their living by the theatres and music- 
halls, from the scene-shifter to the leading lady. 
The book illustrators and caricaturists have also 
combined and, like the bank clerks and the theatri- 
cal Trade Unionists, affiliated their Union to the 
General Confederation of Labour; the Unions of 
the printing trade have promised them their special 
support. The Association of Government Officials 



SOCIALISM, SYNDICALISM 287 

has demanded the right, now denied to it by law, 
to convert itself into a Trade Union afl&liated to 
the General Confederation of Labour, thus follow- 
ing the example of the elementary school teachers 
and of the employees of the Postal, Telegraphic 
and Telephone services. This awakening of those 
classes of the bourgeoisie that live wholly or chiefly 
by their own earnings to the fact that their in- 
terests are the same as those of the proletariat is of 
great significance and cannot fail to have impor- 
tant results. 

These are the factors that make for revolution 
in France. It is impossible not to feel grave 
anxiety about the situation. The C.G.T. is right 
to be prudent, but it must not forget that courage 
is as necessary as prudence, and that, although it 
is wise to wait for the right moment, it is neces- 
sary to recognise it when it has arrived. Should 
there be a spontaneous upheaval, it might, unless 
there were men ready to take control of the move- 
ment and organise the revolution, end in nothing 
but futile violence and ruthless repression. A re- 
volution would be useless unless there were men 
commanding the general confidence of the prole- 
tariat and capable of organising the new social 
conditions. The crisis may produce the men, but 
at present one would find it difficult to name them. 
There is nobody in France who commands univer- 
sal confidence as Jaures did. There has not been a 
moment during the last five years at which his loss 
has not been felt : never wa^ it more sensible 
than now. No event has been more disastrous to 
France in the last half-century than the murder 
of her greatest statesman by a miserable fanatic, 
egged on by the reactionaries and militarists. The 
acquittal of the murderer. Villain, on the ground 
of his patriotic motives by a bourgeois jury was. 



288 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

after all, consistent enough. Both Villain and the 
jury are typical representatives of the devotees 
of that worst of all religions, whose cardinal vir- 
tues are vanity and hate, which is red in tooth and 
claw with the blood of the youth of Europe. But 
what a manifestation of stupidity was that ver- 
dict of twelve representative bourgeois ! What a 
valuable exposure of the dupery of the " Sacred 
Union " ! The densest individual in the French 
proletariat can no longer doubt who are his real 
enemies. 

Irreparable as was the loss of Jaures, nevertheless 
there are many men of courage and capacity among 
the leaders of French Socialism and Trade Unionism 
and in the rank and file ; neither ability nor char- 
acter is lacking. There is, then, ground for hope 
that, when the moment comes, the men also will be 
forthcoming. Perhaps some of them will be men 
at present almost unknown. 



CHAPTER VIII 

BACK TO VOLTAIKE 

" The France of Voltaire and Montesqiiieu — that is the great, 
the true France." — Anatole Fbance. 

That Anatole France was right in saying that 
the true France is the France of Voltaire is my firm 
conviction. Voltaire was the typical Frenchman 
of the best kind with the typical French qualities 
and weaknesses ; only in his case the qualities were 
developed to so rare a degree that they obscured the 
weaknesses. Rationalist, sceptical, even cynical — 
if it be cynical to see things as they are — he was 
at the same time intensely affectionate and his 
benevolence was almost unlimited. He had a pas- 
sion for justice and spent half his life, at con- 
stant risk to himself, in defending the victims of 
injustice; only his marvellous ingenuity enabled 
him to escape the risks that he ran. His immense 
tolerance was perhaps the result of his cynicism, for 
after all what is called a cynical view of human 
nature leads to a tolerant and benevolent attitude. 
It is those who expect too much of human nature 
that are severe on themselves and their fellow- 
creatures. Beware of a man who is hard on him- 
self, says Anatole France, he may hit you by mis- 
take. Voltaire's tolerance finds its highest expres- 
sion in the famous sentence of his letter to Hel- 

289 u 



290 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

vetius : "I wholly disapprove of what you say 
and will defend to the death your right to say it." 
His "Treatise on Religious Toleration " is a noble 
and moving appeal. 

And to what a remarkable degree Voltaire 
possessed that typical French quality of sound 
good sense ! He was essentially a realist — a 
practical man, not in the least an ideologist. 
He never pontificated or posed as a High 
Priest of Humanity, but how completely human 
he was ! French, too, were his mocking ir- 
reverence, his refusal to allow that anj^^thing is 
sacrosanct ; the shafts of his ridicule and his biting 
wit pierced all the traditions and the conventions. 
Hypocrisy has had no more deadly foe. Irreli- 
gious by nature because so profound a believer in 
reason, he was perhaps made anti-religious only 
or chiefly by the hateful intolerance of the Church, 
of which the murder of the Chevalier de la Barre 
was a typical example. But Voltaire also saw, 
just because he had so clear a vision, that there 
can be no reconciliation between reason and faith 
and that the progress of humanity depends on the 
triumph of reason. Perhaps one of the most con- 
vincing proofs of his greatness is the fact that, in 
an age when war was looked upon as a matter of 
course and blessed (as it still is) by the official 
representatives of Christianity,^ he alone exposed 
with scathing irony its brutality and stupidity, 
the hypocrisy of the pretexts on which it is waged. 
" Candide " remains the most damning indictment 
of war ever written. In many respects Voltaire 
was a prophet; although he was no revolutionary, 
his was one of the principal influences that led to 
the Revolution, for his exposure of the cruelty of 

1 There are exceptions, of course, among whom it is only 
just to mention the most important — the present Pope. 



BACK TO VOLTAIRE 291 

the ancien rigime led to its destruction and his 
ruthless criticism of existing beliefs and traditions 
undermined them. All the authors of the Revolu- 
tion were inspired by Voltaire with the passion for 
reason, justice, liberty, and toleration ; Jacobinism, 
as has been said, was the child of Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, in so far as it was not the inevitable re- 
sult of circumstances. 

The clear intellect of Voltaire found expression 
in his limpid prose, French prose in its purest form. 
Few writers attain that simplicity which he 
achieved, a simplicity which is a difficult art to 
acquire; perhaps in the nineteenth century only 
Anatole France has achieved it, for the prose of 
Renan, beautiful as it is, is of a more florid type. 
Voltaire would not have been a typical Frenchman 
if his works had been free from " gauloiserie," 
which is a characteristic of nearly all that is 
greatest in French literature, from the mediaeval 
tales and Rabelais to Anatole France. Indeed, one 
of the greatest liturgical scholars of our time once 
told me that there were distinct traces of " gauloi- 
serie " in the French liturgies of the early middle 
ages. To be sure, it existed in English literature as 
well until Victorian squeamishness expelled it ; the 
bawdy has had an irresistible attraction for 
humanity in every age and in every country. 
The more it is repressed the more attractive it 
becomes — that is why the English like nothing bet- 
ter than being shocked. Squeamishness has its 
price : it has, for instance, ruined caricature in the 
country of Hogarth, Gillray, and Rowlandson, for 
the essence of caricature is brutal frankness. 
Frankness is a French quality and Voltaire pos- 
sessed it to the full. We may be proud of the 
fact that Voltaire loved England and was indeed 
greatly influenced by English literature, which he 

u 2 



292 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

knew thoroughly. He lived in England for nearly 
three years and spoke and wrote our language 
fluently. Newton was one of his heroes and he 
had an even exaggerated admiration for John 
Locke. " I have been your apostle and your 
martyr," he wrote to Horace Walpole; "it is not 
fair that the English should complain of me." ^ 
Walpole had criticised Voltaire for having ventured 
to suggest that Shakespeare, for whom he had an 
intense admiration, was not without faults. The 
" Letters Concerning the English Nation," which 
Voltaire wrote in English and published in London 
in 1733, show how great was his affection for the 
country and the people. 

Voltaire was not, however, typical of all French- 
men; he may represent — I believe that he does 
represent — the " great, the true France," but there 
is another. Pascal is also a typical French intellect 
of another kind, typical but at the same time 
exceptional, for Pascal, like Voltaire, was a genius. 
His anticipation of the theory of evolution — " after 
all, nature was perhaps only a first habit " — was 
as remarkable as his anticipation of Pragmatist 
philosophy, for Pascal came very near to Prag- 
matism. His apologetic really amounted to the 
argument that, since we do not know whether 
there is a God or not, it is safer to assume that 
there is one, for, if we be mistaken, it will make 
no difference, whereas, if there be a God, we shall 
be on the right side; on the other hand, if we 
have denied the existence of God and there should 
happen to be one, we shall have a very uncom- 
fortable time. It is not heroic, but it is eminently 
practical and is a manifestation in its way of 
French good sense. Pascal, like Voltaire, was a 

^ " Voltaire in His Letters," translated with a Preface and 
Forewords by S. G. Tallentyre (John Murray), p. 217. 



BACK TO VOLTAIRE 293 

master of irony and the Jesuits have never really 
recovered from the terrible exposure of the 
'' Provincial Letters," but I confess that it always 
seems to me that there was a good deal of the 
Jesuitical in Pascal himself. And he sometimes 
gives the same impression as Newman — that the 
person whom he was principally trying to convince 
of the truth of Christianity was himself. Chateau- 
briand and Joseph de Maistre were other types of 
the religious Frenchman. Chateaubriand was a 
brilliant writer and an unscrupulous humbug, who 
never really believed in anything but himself. His 
vanity and disloyalty were shown by his conduct 
in 1824 towards Villele, of whose Cabinet he was 
a member, and by the way in which, three years 
later, he coquetted, for personal reasons and out 
of hatred for Villele, with Bonapartists and Re- 
publicans and thus helped to bring about the down- 
fall of Charles X. He was, in fact, a great man 
of letters and an intriguing politician. Joseph de 
Maistre, on the contrary, was a perfectly sincere 
reactionary and fanatic, who would gladly have 
burned all the enemies of the Church as well as all 
Republicans and Democrats; he was a man of 
remarkable gifts, probably the ablest and most 
powerful defender of Catholicism and reaction in 
France in the nineteenth century. De Maistre was 
the typical French Ultramontane and represented 
the forces that were dominant in the French Church 
throughout the nineteenth century and are now 
more dominant in it than ever. For since the 
separation of Church and State the French Church 
has been purged of all its elements with liberal or 
democratic tendencies. 

Lamennais and Montalembert were the pro- 
tagonists of what was called liberal Catholicism 
in the thirties and forties of the nineteenth 



294 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

century. Montalembert had sincere liberal in- 
clinations, and he had the sense to recognise 
the disastrous consequences that the policy of 
the Vatican and the Ultramontanes would have in 
France; he died a bitterly disappointed man with 
dismal forebodings about the future of the French 
Church, which have since been fully justified. But 
Montalembert supported a " freedom of educa- 
tion " which consisted in exempting priests and 
male and female members of religious Orders from 
all the qualifications required from lay teachers in 
schools, and, with Falloux and Thiers, he initiated 
in 1848, after the establishment of the Second 
Republic, reactionary measures quite incompatible 
with liberalism or democracy. His liberalism, 
like that of all liberal Catholics, had considerable 
restrictions. Lamennais was an emotional person 
with many attractive qualities, who began by being 
an ardent and intolerant theocrat ; the failure of 
his absurd dream of reconciling the Papacy and 
democracy and his condemnation by the Pope 
drove him out of the Church, and he became a 
democrat and a republican. His was an essen- 
tially religious character, more so, in fact, than 
that of Joseph de Maistre, who, like the majority 
of Ultramontanes, was really concerned chiefly 
with the Church as a political institution. Lamen- 
nais regarded the Church as a great moral and reli- 
gious force and was astonished to find that the 
Pope did not agree with him. ; the astonishment 
betrayed a certain naivete in his character. 
Another leading liberal Catholic was Lacordaire, 
who is alleged to have said on his death-bed : " I 
die a penitent Catholic and an impenitent liberal." 
Lacordaire, like Montalembert, abandoned what 
they called " the fatal alliance between the Throne 
and the Altar," when he saw that it was ruining 



BACK TO VOLTAIRE 295 

the Church. In a famous sermon preached at 
Notre Dame in 1835, Lacordaire said : "I have 
the greatest possible respect for the old Royalist 
Party, the respect that one feels for a veteran 
covered with glory. But I cannot rely upon a 
veteran whose wooden leg prevents him from scal- 
ing the heights up which the new generation is 
pressing." He was promptly suspended by the 
Archbishop of Paris. The liberal Catholic move- 
ment was condemned by Rome, but in any case 
it would probably have failed to make much im- 
pression on the French people. It was under the 
suspicion of being concerned principally with the 
interests of the Church, and the suspicion had 
some justification. Montalembert and Lacordaire 
aimed at founding a Catholic Party in politics, 
which should be liberal and democratic — up to a 
certain point — but which would inevitably be 
obliged to put the interests of the Church before 
everything. All similar movements in French 
Catholicism since that time have had the same 
fate ; they have all been suspected by the public 
and condemned by the Pope. 

Lamennais, Montalembert, Lacordaire are 
memories of the past; Joseph de Maistre and 
Chateaubriand still live, for their spirit is that of 
the majority of French Catholics. Nor is the in- 
fluence of Pascal entirely extinct — I do not mean 
his influence as a man of letters, which will never 
die, but his influence on French Catholicism. To 
this day one can detect a strain of Jansenism in 
really religious French Catholics ; at least there is 
a strain of Puritanism. The religious history of 
France has been a strange one. France was at one 
time within an ace of becoming a Protestant coun- 
try. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes crushed 
the Protestants or sent them into exile — to the 



296 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

great economic and intellectual loss of the coun- 
try — but right up to the Revolution a large num- 
ber of families of the noblesse were still Protestant. 
Most of them, however, rallied to the Catholic 
Church when, at the Revolution, its cause became 
identified with that of the Monarchy and the 
noblesse. French Protestantism was of the most 
severe type, for it was Calvinist. It is not then 
surprising that there is Puritanism in France. 
Moreover, Puritanism is not at all exclusively 
Protestant; it has always existed in Christianity. 
St. Paul was something of a Puritan, and St. 
Augustine, the spiritual ancestor of Calvin, was 
one of the most rigid Puritans that ever lived. At 
no time in its history has the Catholic Church been 
free from Puritanism. I knew a Frenchwoman 
who would not take her daughters to call at a 
house where there was a reproduction of the Venus 
of Milo in the drawing-room ; she was quite in the 
Catholic tradition, for the Church forbade the repre- 
sentation of the nude in art until the Renaissance. 
That is the spirit of Puritanism, which regards 
natural instincts as immoral and hates the human 
body as a vehicle of sin. The lives of the saints 
are full of it. St. Aloysius Gonzaga, the pattern of 
youth in Jesuit schools, never allowed himself to 
see his own body naked — he contrived somehow to 
put on his night-shirt in bed before removing his 
under-clothes. The same gentleman was so pure 
that he would not look his own mother in the face 
for fear he should be tempted to sin. In many 
French convent schools the pupils are forbidden 
ever to be naked even for the purpose of washing 
and, if they take a bath, are obliged to wear a 
garment covering them from head to foot; a nun 
is present to see that they do not lift it up. The 
discouragement of cleanliness is another form of 



BACK TO VOLTAIRE 297 

contempt for the human body. A friend of mine 
was in his j'^outh at a French Catholic school where 
the boys were allowed to wash their feet only 
once a month — they never had a bath. When a 
deputation waited on the Superior with the plea for 
more frequent foot-baths, he replied that he would 
favourably consider the matter, but he himself saw 
no necessity for a change, since he had not taken 
a foot-bath for twenty years. He was perhaps a 
disciple of St. Benedict Joseph Labre, the 
patron saint of filth and fieas. Catholic Puri- 
tanism is not perhaps exactly of the same kind 
as Protestant, but it is sometimes even worse. 
The immense success of Jansenism in France 
showed that the really religious people among 
the French ha,ve a tendency to Puritanism, 
although Puritanism was far from being the whole 
of Jansenism. 

The majority of French Catholics, however, are 
not religious in spirit any more than other French- 
men. The non-religious character of the French is 
perhaps one reason why Catholicism — and Ultra- 
montane Catholicism — has ultimately triumphed 
over other forms of religion and all attempts to re- 
place it have failed. " There is not enough reli- 
gion in France to make two," Talleyrand is said to 
have remarked; the late Archbishop of Albi 
quoted the remark to Pius X, when the latter 
asked him whether there was any danger of a 
schism resulting from the separation of Church and 
State. Catholicism is religion in its simplest form 
— the propitiation of a deity by the performance 
of certain rites — and, in spite of Jansenism and 
numerous other attempts to alter its character, that 
form has persisted. The obligation of going to 
Mass once a week and to confession and communion 
once a year does not unduly tax the least religious 



298 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

of mortals. A low Mass lasts from twenty to 
twenty-five minutes and, whereas it was once held 
that in order to hear Mass one must arrive before 
the Gospel, it is now considered sufficient to arrive 
before the Canon or even before the consecration. 
The Franciscans in the Middle Ages started the 
convenient theory that one heard Mass in a Fran- 
ciscan church, if one arrived before the " Ite, 
missa est," with which it concludes, and thereby 
filled their churches to the detriment of the parish 
churches and the indignation of the secular clergy. 
This theory must still have partisans in France, for 
on any Sunday morning one may see large num- 
bers of men arriving at the Madeleine just before 
the end of the eleven o'clock High Mass. They 
wait at the bottom of the church to watch the 
women go out, and very agreeable acquaintances, I 
am told, have often been made in this way. The 
English Catholic is a very different person from the 
Catholic of a Catholic country; he takes the whole 
thing seriously, as Aeneas Piccolimini (afterwards 
Pius II) said with contemptuous pity of the Irish 
of his day. The Catholic of a Catholic country — at 
any rate in France and Italy — is always exercising 
his ingenuity to sail as near the wind as possible — 
to get round the laws of the Church or to discover 
the least that he can possibly do to comply with 
them. He has the valuable aid of the moral theolo- 
gians, who have, for instance, decided in France 
that a water-fowl is fish and may, therefore, be 
eaten on a day of abstinence. So the wealthy 
French Catholic, whose delight it is to dine as 
sumptuously as he possibly can on a Friday without 
breaking the laws of the Church, eats wild duck 
with a clear conscience. This spirit of frondisme 
is, as I have remarked in a previous chapter, 
very common among Frenchmen in general — they 



BACK TO VOLTAIRE 299 

love to evade rules and regulations; it is, of 
course, a natural reaction from respect for 
authority. 

The Catholic Church, however, is not primarily a 
religious, But a political organisation, and that is the 
chief reason why it retains a certain hold in France. 
The Church is the last hope of the reactionaries. 
Nobody can come into contact with French Catho- 
lics without noticing how very little interest most 
of them take in religious matters. The majority 
of Catholic men, at any rate, rather accept the 
dogmas of the Church than believe in them ; they 
swallow them whole, so to speak, and think no more 
about them for the rest of their lives. That is the 
case with the most intellectual of them. Pasteur, for 
instance, was a practising though never a devout 
Catholic, but everybody that knew him agrees that 
he never exercised his intellect on religion ; he put 
it in a separate compartment of his brain and left 
it there without ever attempting to make a syn- 
thesis between it and his other quite inconsistent 
beliefs. Possibly it was merely the externals of 
religion that appealed to him. That is quite an in- 
telligible attitude — indeed, one of my friends is 
always regretting that it is not possible to retain 
the externals of Catholic ceremonial and get rid 
of everything else. Purely external conformity 
is very common in France. The so-called 
" Modernist " movement was an attempt to revive 
Catholicism as a living religious force and to make 
a synthesis between it and contemporary thought. 
The Modernists were of various kinds : some were 
interested in philosophy, some in biblical and his- 
torical criticism, some in political and social ques- 
tions. According to their interest, they attempted 
to reconcile Catholicism with contemporary philo- 
sophy, with the results of historical criticism, or 



300 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

with democracy. One of the most distinguished 
Modernists was M. Alfred Loisy, the eminent his- 
torical critic, who was finally excommunicated and 
is now professor of the history of religions at the 
College de France. The majority of the Modernists 
were men of strong religious feeling, more so than 
most orthodox French Catholics. Some of them 
believed that Catholicism in its present form could 
not last, and aimed at a means of breaking the 
fall, so to speak, and preventing the collapse of 
Catholicism from leading to general irreligion. But 
these were not in the majority; the prevalent 
tendency was to believe in the possibility of 
restatement of Catholic dogma as would enable the 
Church to survive. It was the dream of Lamennais 
over again in a different form. The philosophical 
side of Modernism was based to a great extent on 
Pragmatism and on the philosophy of M. Bergson ; 
it was strongly anti-intellectualist. Faith was to 
be saved by being entirely separated from reason 
and put on a different plane. " Le coeur a ses 
raisons que la raison ne connait pas," had said 
Pascal, in this, as in so many other respects, a fore- 
runner, and that sums up the Modernist philo- 
sophy. It was in reality the old heresy of 
" fideism " in a new form. Some Modernists carried 
symbolism to extremes ; they believed that it would 
be possible to retain Catholic dogmas and the 
Catholic rites while giving them all a purely sym- 
bolical meaning — to believe, for instance, in the 
Virgin Birth of Jesus in some symbolical sense, 
while admitting that it was not an historical fact, 
and to continue to go to Mass without believing in 
the magical rite. Some few Modernists went so far 
as to hold that it did not matter whether Jesus had 
actually existed or not, since in any case one could 
worship the symbolical Christ. They were certainly 



BACK TO VOLTAIRE 301 

mistaken: such an attitude may be possible for a 
few highly intellectual individuals with vivid 
imaginations, but it could never be that of a 
popular religion. The French peasant would not 
continue to go to Mass if he ceased to believe in 
the magical power of the priest, and would not con- 
tinue to worship the Host unless he believed it to 
be God. He has, in fact, ceased to a great extent 
to go to Mass because he has ceased to believe in 
these things. It would be useless to explain to him 
that he ought to go on worshipping the Host be- 
cause the fact that the worshippers concentrate 
their attention on it and accept it as the symbol of 
God makes it equivalent to God for them. I re- 
member many attempts to induce M. Loisy to 
organise a symbolical cult, but with his French good 
sense he invariably refused. 

The Modernists were a small band of sincere and 
disinterested men, who were doomed to failure. 
The Pope was right from his point of view to con- 
demn them, for, although they would probably 
have succeeded in prolonging the existence of 
Catholicism for a certain time and would certainly 
have preserved religious feeling to some extent, 
they would inevitably have destroyed the Papacy. 
Their ideas were incompatible with absolute 
authority. The Papacy may, indeed, be destroyed 
in any case, or at least sink into complete insignifi- 
cance, but it was natural that it should prefer to 
take the risk of what the future may have in store 
for it rather than accept certain extinction. More- 
over, the condemnation of Modernism is not to be 
regretted. All the attempts, however sincere, to 
adapt the Church to democracy or to reconcile it 
with science only serve to confuse people's minds 
and to obscure the incompatibility of Catholicism 
with both. The condemnation of Modernism, as 



302 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

of all previous movements of a similar kind, made 
the situation quite clear. Now that one recognises 
the condemnation as an emancipation, one can 
hardly believe it possible that it should have caused 
such mental anguish at the time. In France, at 
any rate, it is now clearly recognised on both sides 
that no reconciliation can ever be possible between 
the most autocratic political institution in the 
world and democracy, liberalism, or Socialism : 
" ceci tuera cela." 

That recognition has been aided by the complete 
identification of French Catholicism with political 
reaction. Throughout the nineteenth century, and 
more than ever at this moment, the reactionary 
party, the clerical party, the Royalist party have 
been and are different names for the same thing. 
The memory of what the Catholic Church did when 
it had the power under Louis XVIII and 
Charles X, and to a less extent during the Second 
Empire, had never died out ; always it was the chief 
bulwark of privilege, of capitalism, of autocracy. 
Leo XIII tried to induce French Catholics to rally 
to the Republic, but he failed — happily for the 
Republic, for, had they done so at that time, they 
would probably have gained the mastery of the 
country and France would have had a clerical 
Republic even less democratic than the bourgeois 
Republic and completely under the control of the 
Church. The identification of the Church with 
political reaction was the chief cause of the revival 
of Catholicism among intellectuals and the upper 
and middle bourgeoisie in general, which began in 
the last decade of the nineteenth century and con- 
tinued until the war. Intellectuals rallied to the 
Church as the representative of authority and the 
barrier against the rising tide of revolution; the 
bourgeoisie in general rallied to the moral police- 



BACK TO VOLTAIRE 303 

man who would keep the proletariat in order and 
protect their own money-bags. It is certain that 
only where the Church is still strong in France is 
the population docile and submissive and that the 
proletariat and the peasantry have developed inde- 
pendence and self-reliance as they have become less 
and less religious. The secularisation of the schools 
which emancipated them from the control of the 
Church was, as I have already said, an event of the 
utmost importance in the history of France, which 
has had far-reaching consequences. Without it 
Socialism would never have attained its present 
position and the proletariat would probably still 
have been completely at the mercy of the capita- 
lists. The General Confederation of Labour was 
founded thirteen years after the secularisation of 
the schools, and it was only when the generations 
educated in the secular schools began to grow up 
that Socialism and Trade Unionism became serious 
factors in French society. It was, then, a true 
instinct that led the conservative and reactionary 
bourgeoisie to regret its anti-clericalism and rally 
to the Church. 

Brunetiere was a typical example of the intel- 
lectuals that returned to Catholicism. His conver- 
sion was entirely due to the conviction that the 
Church was the last hope of authority. I doubt 
whether he ever had any real faith in Catholic doc- 
trine; his Catholicism was almost exclusively 
political. So lightly did the religious side of it sit 
upon him that he never forgave Pius X for having 
rejected his advice in regard to the Separation Law 
and having refused to authorise the formation of 
Catholic associations under that law. Brunetiere 
died without having received the last sacraments 
because he did not want to receive them. He was 
given Catholic burial on the ground that his death 



304 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

was sudden; he fell dead, in fact, while in the act 
of drinking a glass of wine at a meal. But he had 
been ill for months and had known that he might 
die at any moment and, had he remained a believ- 
ing Catholic, he would certainly have received the 
sacraments during that time. Some of the political 
Catholics have gone to extremes. M. Maurras, for 
instance, calls himself an atheist Catholic ; he wrote 
in the Action Frangaise a famous article expound- 
ing his conception of " Catholicism without 
Christ," which the Croix, one of the leading 
Catholic papers, declared to be thoroughly Catho- 
lic in spirit. M. Maurras objects, in par- 
ticular, to the ethical teaching of the Sermon on 
the Mount. 

When the war broke out practising Catholics 
over the greater part of France were chiefly to be 
found in the bourgeoisie and the peasantry, and 
among them the proportion of women was at least 
ten to one. The number of men that are Catholics 
in any sense — even a purely political one — can be 
fairly accurately gauged by the result of a general 
election, for the vast majority of Catholics vote for 
reactionary candidates. There are certain country 
districts where most of the peasants still go to Mass 
but nevertheless vote Republican, but they are rare 
and are counterbalanced by the Freethinkers in the 
bourgeoisie that vote reactionary. The popular 
view of the matter was expressed in the remark of 
the wife of a village mayor in the Sarthe some three 
years ago. " Ah, sir," she said, " the day of M. 
Poincare's election I felt sure that no good would 
come of it : the cure was so pleased." At a general 
election the avowed reactionaries usually poll about 
one-eighth of the total number of votes cast and 
that pretty well represents the proportion of men in 
France that have Catholic sympathies ; the propor- 



BACK TO VOLTAIRE 305 

tion that "practise" is much smaller. Fourteen 
or fifteen years ago one of the French Bishops 
estimated the number of persons, including 
children, who attended Mass at all, however 
irregularly, at about eight millions, or twenty per 
cent, of the population. Since then attendance at 
Mass has steadily diminished, especially in the 
rural districts. Visitors to Paris may easily be 
misled in this regard by the crowded congregations 
in the fashionable churches. But, on the one 
hand, the women and children of the upper and 
middle bourgeoisie go to Mass as a rule, and on 
the other there are comparatively few churches in 
Paris. When the Separation Law was passed, in 
1905, the average population of a Parisian parish 
was over 36,000 ; it is now rather smaller, as a few 
new parishes have been formed. The difference 
between London and Paris in this regard is very 
great, especially when one takes into account that 
in London the Anglican churches are not even a 
majority of the places of worship, whereas in Paris 
there are only a handful of Protestant temples and 
Jewish synagogues in addition to the Catholic 
churches. 

In this, as in other regards, circumstances differ 
in different parts of France. The most religious 
districts of the country are the north — French 
Flanders — and the west — Normandy, Brittany and 
the Vendee. The south as a whole is irreligious, 
and so is Central France ; there are whole depart- 
ments where the village churches are nearly empty, 
and some of them are even closed altogether for 
lack of a congregation. One of the most striking 
symptoms of the last few years is that even the 
women in many rural parts of France are ceasing 
to go to Mass. The number of people that still 
allow their children to be baptised and to make 



306 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

their First Communion and that go to the Church 
for marriages and funerals is much larger than the 
number of those that actually practise, especially 
in the rural districts. First Communion survives 
to a considerable extent because it is a social func- 
tion; for a girl it is a sort of " coming out." The 
children are feasted, are given lots of presents, go 
about visiting their relatives for a couple of days 
in their First Communion costumes, and generally 
have a good time, so that they are not pleased if 
their parents' principles prevent them from having 
these enjoyments. But I once heard a priest re- 
mark that his chief thought at a First Communion 
was how very few of the young communicants he 
would ever see at the altar again. In a very large 
number of cases the First Communion is also the 
last. In the towns the masses of the people are 
abandoning even the practice of having their 
children baptised, and purely civil marriages and 
funerals are very common. The civil marriage is 
the only marriage recognised by French law, and 
the religious ceremony, if any, must follow it. 
Towns differ, of course, in this respect : for 
instance. Catholics are stronger in Lille and Lyons, 
particularly the former, than in any other large 
town, although still a comparatively small 
minority. On the other hand, I found that in a 
country town of about 5,000 inhabitants in the de- 
partment of the Yonne forty per cent, of the 
funerals were civil — an unusually large proportion 
in the country. 

Many people thought that the war would lead to 
a great revival of religion; indeed, writers like M. 
Paul Bourget and General Cherfils hailed it on that 
account. M. Bourget exclaimed in the Echo de 
Paris early in the war : " Ne trouvez-vous pas que 
nous vivons plus, nous vivons mieux } " and 



BACK TO VOLTAIRE 307 

General Cherfils, who is an ardent Catholic and 
reactionary J wrote of the war as " this healthy 
blood-letting which will regenerate us." Such 
pronouncements would perhaps have been more 
seemly if it had been General Cherfils' blood that 
was being let out and if M. Bourget had been in 
the trenches, where people were not living either 
more or better. But they were both waging war 
in arm-chairs. At the beginning of the war there 
were certainly more people in the churches, or, at 
any rate, many people went to church more often. 
That was to be expected; people always invoke 
the help of Heaven when everything else has failed. 
Great hopes were raised by the fact that many of 
the soldiers consented to wear blessed medals, al- 
though in most cases they did so to please a female 
relative, or an army chaplain, or even an officer, for 
some of the officers used their position to promote 
their own opinions. There was also the feeling 
that a medal could not do one any harm and might 
by some remote possibility do one good; there is 
latent superstition in every one of us and the belief 
in charms still survives. But at the beginning of 
the war there was undoubtedly a certain revival of 
religious practice at the same time as an outbreak 
of superstition of every kind. Serious daily papers 
published prophecies, the spuriousness of which 
has long since been demonstrated — even our old 
friend St. Malachy was resuscitated by the Figaro 
—and soothsayers, fortune-tellers, mediums, and 
clairvoyants did an enormous business. The re- 
vival, however, has not lasted, and I am disposed 
to think that the net result of the war has been a 
diminution of religious belief and practice. It has, 
of course, had different ejects on different people, 
but there can be no doubt that the war has brought 
out in full relief the extreme difficulty of believing 

X* 



308 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

in a God who is at once omnipotent and benevolent. 
The difficulty existed before, but the great catas- 
trophe has made many people realise it for the first 
time, and a large proportion of them have come to 
the conclusion that it is insurmountable. A con- 
siderable number of women have abandoned their 
religion in consequence. As for the soldiers, any 
tendency that there might have been among them 
to take refuge in religion has been checked by the 
extreme indiscretion of the Catholics themselves, 
especially some of the ladies of the Croix Rouge. 
Deep resentment has been caused by the pressure 
put upon wounded soldiers in hospitals to receive 
the sacraments or to go to Mass; the pressure has 
often gone to the length of giving or withholding 
favours, according as the men complied or not with 
the demands. Some officers have also ordered their 
men to hear Mass or used pressure upon them to 
do so ; there were cases where officers stood at the 
door of a church to note what men came and put 
a black mark against the others. In the French 
army there is no church parade, and attendance at 
Mass is purely a personal matter ; men that wish to 
go are given the opportunity when it is possible. 
Nothing could be more calculated to put French 
soldiers against religion than the fact that their 
officers attempted to impose it on them. They 
often went to Mass with fury in their hearts. I 
was told by a Catholic officer, who was himself 
shocked at the occurrence, that nearly all the men 
in a certain regiment received communion one day 
in order to placate their commanding officer, al- 
though most of them had never communicated, at 
any rate since they were children, and some were 
not even baptised. It is usually safe in France to 
count on the stupidity of the clericals ; the Republic 
has more often been saved by it than by the 



BACK TO VOLTAIRE 309 

wisdom of the Republicans and the Church has 
suffered from it again and again. The first thing that 
the ladies of the Croix Rouge did in a certain place 
on taking possession of a public building which 
had been granted for a hospital was to remove the 
bust of the Republic, by way, no doubt, of show- 
ing their enthusiasm for the " Sacred Union." In 
another case, when the Chant du Depart was being- 
sung, a priest gave instructions that the first line 
of the chorus, " La Republique nous appelle," 
should be changed, in defiance of metre, to 
"La patrie nous appelle." These puerile mani- 
festations are typical of the mentality of the French 
clerical. 

On the whole, then, it is probable that the 
Church has lost rather than gained by the war, 
although it is difficult to form a definite opinion. 
The enormous sale of M. Henri Barbusse's books 
supports that view, for they have been violently 
denounced by all the Catholic and patriotic Press, 
and M. Barbusse is intensely anti-religious. My 
belief is that he represents a very large proportion 
of the young men that have served in the war. 
Although books about the war do not as a rule 
appeal to men that have served in it, " Le Feu " 
was very widely read at the Front, and I have 
never met a soldier who did not declare it to be the 
most true description of the war. It had the 
immense advantage of being written by a private 
soldier, whose experiences and point of view are 
very different from those of the officer. The prob- 
able effect of the war on thought in general is 
another question of great interest. Before the war 
there had been a philosophical as well as a religious 
reaction among the bourgeoisie. The fashionable 
philosophy was that of M. Bergson, which in- 
fluenced many of the younger men in the upper 

X* 2 



310 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

and middle bourgeoisie, and there was a strong 
reaction against the rationalism and intellectualism 
of the previous generation. I am not competent 
to express an opinion on the merits of Bergsonism 
as a philosophical system; I can only judge it by 
its practical results, about which there can be no 
doubt — M. Bergson's influence has made almost 
entirely for political and religious reaction. This 
result may have been quite other than M. Bergson 
desired or intended — indeed he probably had no 
intentions in the matter, for a philosopher is not 
concerned with such considerations. Pragmatism 
has been exploited in France to bolster up every 
kind of superstition; naturally so, for if anything 
is to be accepted as true that is useful to humanity 
— that " works " — one has only to hold that a 
superstition of any sort is useful to humanity to be 
justified in defending it. No doubt Pragmatism 
has been abused and made to cover all sorts of 
opinions that its prophets would never have 
allowed to be justified. For many people it means 
that anything is true which they find it convenient 
or comfortable to believe. It has even been used 
to deny the existence of positive knowledge and to 
justify the theory that facts are not a matter of 
evidence. Thus Catholics have maintained that 
the question of the existence of Jesus or of his 
crucifixion is not a matter of historical evidence. 
The late Lord Acton once said to me that Roman 
Catholics were people who believed facts to be 
matters of opinion and opinions to be facts ; some 
Pragmatists seem to be of much the same mind. 
Nothing could be more convenient for the religions 
than a theory which dispenses with historical evi- 
dence. I do not say that the Pragmatist philo- 
sophers would themselves defend such a theory, 
but many of those who profess to be their disciples 



BACK TO VOLTAIRE 311 

do. Judged by its practical results, Pragmatism is 
a dangerous system ; it has undermined the sense 
of truth in many of its adherents and led to intel- 
lectual insincerity. In fact, it is really a denial of 
the existence of truth. I remember a young and 
ardent follower of M. Bergson calmly telling me 
that of course the present economic system was not 
to the advantage of the proletariat, but it was to 
the interest of society that they should be made to 
believe that it was. People are already too much 
inclined to ignore facts and need no encouragement 
in that regard. And who can say what is really to 
the advantage of the human race ? It is a matter 
of opinion. It will not really be possible to apply 
the Pragmatist test of truth until the end of the 
world, and then there will be nobody to apply it. 
A witty profesor at Harvard who was at once a 
personal friend and a philosophical opponent of 
William James once suggested to the latter a new 
form of oath to be taken in law courts by Prag- 
matist witnesses. It ran thus : "I swear to tell 
what is expedient, the whole of what is expedient 
and nothing but what is expedient, so help me 
Future Experience." That is really the last word 
on the subject. Even if it be true, for example, 
that we have to assume as a working hypothesis 
that we and other people possess Free Will, that 
does not prove that we actually possess it. It 
only proves that it really does not matter in the 
least whether we possess it or not, and as we can 
never find out, it is a waste of time to bother our- 
selves about it. The appeal from Pragmatism is 
to ordinary good sense : there are certain 
things that are ascertainable because they are ques- 
tions of evidence ; there are certain things that are 
not ascertainable and never will be. When Dr. 
Johnson struck the earth with his walking stick and 



312 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

found it solid, that did not prove, as he seems to 
have imagined, that matter really exists, but it did 
prove that it does not matter whether it 
exists or not. Nobody has yet bettered the de- 
finition of the metaphysician as " a blind man in :i 
dark room looking for a black cat which isn't 
there." We can all make our own guesses. 

One cannot help having a certain suspicion of a 
philosopher whose lectures are attended, as were 
those of M. Bergson before the war, chiefly by 
fashionable ladies. The attraction was, I imagine, 
M. Bergson's theory of intuition. Women usually 
claim to have more intuition than men — the claim 
may be justified, for all I know — and the theory 
flattered them. Besides, nothing can be more com- 
forting than the notion that by intuition we can get 
further than all the great psychologists and other 
men of science, for everybody has intuition to some 
degree, and the great advantage of the theory is that 
it seems to dispense people from the necessity of any 
kind of work or study. Theories that save trouble 
are always popular, and a smart woman is natur- 
ally gratified at the idea that she can know more 
about psychology, for instance, than Dr. Pierre 
Janet. That, I fancy, is one reason, at any rate, 
why M. Bergson's lecture-room at the College de 
France became the best place in Paris for observing 
the latest fashions in hats. As I have said, I am 
no metaphysician and approach the subject merely 
from the point of view of the plain man. From 
that point of view any philosophy that tends to the 
disparagement of reason is pernicious, and, what- 
ever M. Bergson may desire, his philosophy has 
that tendency. That we are all of us usually 
guided by impulse rather than by reason is too 
true, but it is not a matter for satisfaction ; all 
progress has been the result of the correction of 



BACK TO VOLTAIRE 813 

impulse by reason, which, after all, is the only 
thing that distinguishes us from other animals. 
As for intuition, by what test can it possibly be 
tried, who is to decide between the various intui- 
tions of various people ? The Church itself has had 
the good sense to recognise the difficulty by re- 
fusing to allow the revelations experienced by 
saints to be imposed as matters of faith. Be that 
as it may, of one thing there can be no doubt, 
namely, that, as I have said, those who have been 
influenced by M. Bergson are reactionaries to a 
man. He has been one of the strongest reactionary 
forces in France during the present century. I 
frankly admit that that fact is enough for me, and 
Pragmatists, at any rate, must admit the validity 
of the test. 

The Church, however, has officially refused the 
aid that M. Bergson's philosophy seems to give it. 
It condemned the Modernist adaptations of Berg- 
sonism, and I am not sure that some of M. 
Bergson's works are not on the Index. This 
may seem stupid, for undoubtedly Bergsonism is 
the forlorn hope of those who wish to save 
Catholicism for intellectuals ; it is indeed probably 
the only means by which Catholicism can be justi- 
fied to the modern mind. For the supposed his- 
torical facts on which Christianity has hitherto 
been based have nearly all been annihilated bv 
historical criticism and only a system which 
dispenses with facts can save it. Yet I am not 
sure that Rome was wrong in the matter. It must 
always be remembered that Rome is _ above all 
practical, that its point of view is political— -T use 
the term in its widest sense — rather than religious 
or theoretical. Catholic Rome has retained the 
qualities of pagan Rome to a remarkable degree; 
it has " put on Christ " as one puts on a garment, 



314 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

but underneath it remains the same. Ancient 
Rome was essentially practical, not metaphysical 
or theoretical. The practical good sense of pagan 
Rome survives in Catholic Rome and makes it 
regard with suspicion any attempt to provide a 
new apologetic. For it knows that the safest plan 
is to leave things alone and that, if it once allowed 
Catholics to begin inquiring into the origin of their 
religion or the philosophical basis of their belief, it 
would be all up with it. There are still large num- 
bers of people ready to open their mouths and shut 
their eyes and swallow the pill whole ; the number 
is no doubt diminishing, but so much the worse, 
any other system would mean the end of 
Catholicism. And Rome knows perfectly well 
that, even if Bergsonism kept and perhaps keeps a 
certain number of intellectuals or would-be intel- 
lectuals in the Church for the present, it will never 
keep the masses of the people in it. On the con- 
trary, if priests were allowed to begin expounding 
a Pragmatist or Bergsonian apologetic, those of the 
masses of the people that still remain in the Church 
— a small minority in France, but not in some other 
backward countries — would soon go out of it. They 
stay because they believe the whole of Christian 
mythology to be literally true — I am speaking of 
those who still have the faith ; there are, of course, 
some who continue to go to Mass by habit or tradi- 
tion without really believing. Rome also knows 
that Bergsonism will go out' of fashion and that 
good sense will reassert itself in an intellectualist 
revival ; what would then happen to those who had 
rejected the intellectualist basis of Catholicism ? 
Therefore Rome remains firmly intellectualist ; the 
whole system is perfectly logical and consistent if 
one only admits the premisses ; the one thinsr neces- 
sary is to prevent anybody from inquiring into the 



BACK TO VOLTAIRE 315 

validity of the premisses. It is more easy to do 
that than it would be to build up anew on a fresh 
foundation. 

There are signs already of an intellectualist and 
rationalist revival in France. It was always in- 
evitable, the French character being what it is. 
Bergsonism is essentially un-French, although 
" Propaganda " during the war has been circulat- 
ing at the public expense pamphlets written to 
prove that M. Bergson is the only true and lineal 
philosophical descendant of Descartes and that his 
philosophy is the complete synthesis and final ex- 
pression of all French philosophical tradition. Why 
this thesis should have formed part of the French 
official war propaganda is not evident, but prob- 
ably the explanation is the mission to America with 
which M. Bergson was entrusted by the French 
Government during the war. He went to stir up a 
warlike spirit and to promote American interven- 
tion, and he seems to have manifested a 
Chauvinism of the purest brand. American liberals 
speak of his activities in their country without 
amenity — according to them he supported the most 
reactionary elements in America and appealed with 
the skill of an accomplished demagogue to the 
worst passions of the multitude. M. Bergson had 
already shown diplomatic skill in connection with 
his candidature for the Academy. He wrote a 
letter to a Jesuit in which he expressed the opinion 
that his work, "Creative Evolution,'* logically 
tended towards the belief in a personal God. The 
Academy is a bien-pensant and reactionary body, 
which attaches great importance to the opinions of 
its members. That is, no doubt, the reason why 
most of the great French men of letters during the 
past century have not been Academicians and why 
the Academy is now — with a few brilliant excep- 



316 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

tions such as Anatole France, Mgr. Duchesne, 
Henri de Regnier and M. Bergson himself — a col- 
lection of mediocrities. How Anatole France ever 
became an Academician is a mystery, but he was 
elected before the Dreyfus affair; he would never 
have been elected had he been presented after it. 
Perhaps M. Bergson 's diplomatic activities have 
not improved his credit, but the reaction that I 
have mentioned is due to other causes. The war 
has produced, at any rate in those who have taken 
part in it, a sense of realities, which is impatient 
of metaphysical discussions and philosophical 
systems. Above all, it has shown the disastrous 
results of impulse and religious feeling — for 
patriotism is a true religion — and the import- 
ance of reason. Reason has been completely 
dethroned during the war, and the consequences 
have not been good for the world. So far as my 
experience goes, the young French intellectuals 
have come back from the Front convinced rational- 
ists. M. Barbusse's latest book, " Clarte," is 
symptomatic; the future probably lies much 
more with his point of view than with that of M. 
Bergson. A philosophy which commended itself to 
rich idle women is hardly likely to appeal to men 
that have had so terrible an experience of realities. 
Probably M. Bergson's influence in France has 
always been in great measure due to his great 
literary gifts ; he writes a beautiful style and has 
remarkable lucidity of expression. Perhaps it is 
chiefly as a man of letters that he will live. But 
men that have been through this war need some- 
thing more than literature. They know that 
ignorance, illusions, romantic beliefs made the war 
and will make other wars unless they are subdued 
by reason and positive knowledge. Like Simon 
Paulin in M. Barbusse*s book, they want clarity— 



BACK TO VOLTAIRE 317 

positive facts, not metaphysical speculations. And 
their nearness to death for five years has empha- 
sised the supreme importance of life. It is not 
they who will " bring us back to God," as Mr. 
Britling fondly imagined ; rather do they say, with 
Simon Paulin, " Je ne vois pas Dieu. Je vois par- 
tout, partout, I'absence de Dieu." For no succour 
came to them from an indifferent and neutral 
Heaven. They see that Christianity and Patriotism 
justify war and make its continuance possible by 
teaching that the dead are better off than the living 
and that it is a happy thing to die young for one's 
country. Those lies have been the excuse of the 
callous indifference of the old to the slaughter of 
the youth of Europe and have been the sedative 
which "has prevented revolt against the great 
atrocity. The priests of Christ and the priests of 
Mars — the two functions have often been united 
in the same individuals — have glorified and encour- 
aged war by preaching its ennobling and purifying 
effects. Did not an Anglican bishop declare that 
he had never felt so near to Christ as at the 
Front ? The men that have been through the war 
and not merely " seen it through " have seen 
through the romantic disguises in which war has 
been decked out in order to get civilised humanity 
to tolerate it. They will have none of the illusions 
that have made men slaves and sent them to kill 
one another without knowing why. "II le faut, tu 
ne sauras pas," ^ say religion and patriotism. They 
reply : " We will not; we will know." The war 
has thrown everything into the melting-pot : all 
the established beliefs and traditions which were 
accepted without inquiry. Henceforth there will 
be an increasing number of men that will ask 
" why " before they accept anything, before they 

1 " Clart^," by Henri Barbusse, p. 179, &c. 



318 MY SECOND COUNTRY 

submit to anything that may be imposed upon 
them as a self-evident duty. They will appeal to 
reason against faith and tradition. 

Therefore is the spirit of the true France coming 
into its own again, and the young intellect of 
France is returning to the rationalism of Voltaire. 
The philosophy of the drawing-rooms belongs 
already to the past. It was an agreeable pastime for 
people with too much to eat and nothing to do — 
the sort of people who in England and America 
dabble in Christian Science — but it is out of date 
in a time when hard facts make themselves dis- 
agreeably insistent. Before long perhaps it will 
not be possible to eat at all without doing some- 
thing ; such conditions will be favourable neither to 
Bergsonism nor to Christian Science. The convic- 
tion is growing among the men in France that have 
been through the war that war is the inevitable 
result of certain social and economic conditions, 
and that what nineteen centuries of Christianity 
have failed to do may be done by economic 
changes. So we come back once more to the pre- 
dominance of the economic factor in human affairs. 
The revival of Rationalism can only aid the 
triumph of Socialism. 



INDEX 



Academy, the French, 37, 315 

Action FranQaise, V, 75, 161, 
178 

Administration and Legisla- 
ture, 76 

Administrative and political 
systems, 73 

Agricultxiral system, 222 

Agriculture, 59 

Alsace-Lorraine, 50, 61, 64, 
180, 181 

Anti-Semitism, 71 

Augagneur, M., 261 

Authority, respect for, 31 

Avou6s and Avocats, 129 



B 



Balzac, 197 

Bank Clerks, strike of, 286 

Barbusse, Henri, 234, 309, 316 

Barres, Maurice, 268 

Barron, Oswald, 212 

Bastardy Law, 47 

Baudelaire, 37 

Bergson, H., 300, 309-312 
et seq. 

Birth-rate, 48 

Bloc, the, 136-7 

Bonnot, 259 

Boulanger, 178 ; B. move- 
ment, 162 

Bourgeois, Emile, " History of 
Modern France," 135 

MY SECOND COUNTRY 319 



Bourgeois, the, 16 ; definition 
of, 184 ; and the prole- 
tariat, 21 

Bourgeoisie, 26, 191-94 ; and 
peasantry, 26 

Bourget, Paul, 306 

Briand, Aristide, 17, 29, 97, 
129, 137, 154, 238, 261 

Bruneti^re, 268, 303 

Business methods, antiquated, 
200-209 



C 



Caillaux, Joseph, 17, 123-125, 

139, 169, 208 
Catholic Church, political in 

France, 299 
Catholic obligations, 297 
Catholicism and Intellectual- 
ism, 313 
Ceccaldi, Pascal, 62 
Chamber of Deputies, the, 

method of election, 101 ; split 

into groups, 137 
Chambord, Comte de, 95 
" Chant du Depart," 38 
Charles X, 23, 85, 136, 175, 

302 
Chateati and Cur6, 30 
Chauvinism, 38, 39, 130 
Cherfils, General, 306-7 
" Chinoiserie," 82 
Christianity and Patriotism, 

317 
Church and State, 132 
Civil Service, English and 

French, 147 



320 



INDEX 



Civism, 34 

Cleanliness neglected in schools, 
297 

Clemenceau, M., 65, 88, 137, 
140, 144-5, 154-161, 270, 
283, 285 

Clergy, the, 30, 131 

Colonisation, 64 

Combes, Enaile, 25, 176 

Commerce paralysed by the 
War, 53 

Commune of 1871, 263 

Concierges and social distinc- 
tions, 195 

Conseils-G6n6raux, 80 

Constitution, the French, 94 

Copp6e, 268 

Corruption, political, 145 et sea. 

Courbet, 186 

Courteline, Georges, Quotation 
from, 111 ; his works, 177 



D 



Dantzig, 282 

Daudet, L6on, 75 

Daumier, 186 

Decentralisation, 26, 177 

Decorations, 149 

De la Barre, Chevr., 290 

Delaisi, M. Francis, 52, 66-68, 
70 

Delcasse, M., 169, 176 

Deputies and their wives, 155 

Deroulede, Paul, 39, 268 

Descaves, Lucien, 177 

" Dictatorship of the Prole- 
tariat," 273, 278 

Dilke, Sir C, 101, 137 

Divorce Cases, 35 

Dreyfus Case, 25, 126, 162 

Dumoulin, M., 285 



Elections, local, 78-80; Sena- 
torial, 99 ; for Chamber. 
101-105 

Engels, 237, 257, 273, 275, 278 

"Etatisme," 74 (note), 116, 
163, 238 

Exchange against France, 66 



F 



Factory Acts, inadequate, 113 
Family, hmitation of, 43 
Ferry, Jules, and the Educa- 
tion Law, 130 
Finance, 53 
Financial Institutions, power 

of, 84 
First Commimion, 306 
Flaubert, 223 
Forms of politeness, 37 
Fox, Charles James, 166 
France, Anatole, 35, 165, 186, 

197, 233, 289, 291 
France and Expansion, 236 
Franco-Russian Alliance, 97 
Free Trade and Protection, 

59 
French character, British mis- 
takes about, 13 ; a paradox, 
16 

— Constitution compared with 
American, 95 

— endurance, 33 

— men of genius, 293 

— race not decadent, 14, 15 

— the, contrast between in- 
dividual and collective in- 
telligence, 19 

— the, keen to recognise in- 
tellectual worth, 18 

Frondism, 31 



E 



"Economic Malthusianism," 66 
Education, 80 



G 

Gambetta, 94, 136 
Gauloiserie, 291 



INDEX 



321 



General ? Confederation of 

Labour. 256 et seq., 284, 303 
George. Mr. Lloyd, 275, 283 
Godard, Justin, 270 
Government appointments 

sought for, 212 
" Great Press, the," 144 
GriffueJhes, 257 
Guerard, A. L., 183, 188-190, 

199, 209, 213 
Chierre Sociale, la, 258 et seq. 
Guesde, Jules, 238-9, 256, 

260-61, 263 

H 

Havoc of the War, 52 

Hennessy, M. Jean, 179 

Herv6, Gustave, 258 

High Finance, its influence, 
71, 72 

and the capitalist sys- 
tem, 159 

Holy Alliance, the, 165 

Hugo, Victor, 9, 18, 37, 186 



Lafargue, Paul, 256 

Lafayette, 86 

Lagardelle, 257 

Landlords unduly favoured, 

117 
Lansdowne, Lord, 283 
Lavisse, Ernest, 268 
League of Nations, the, 279, 

283 
Legislature, the French, 99 
Lenin, 274 
Libel, Law of, 122 
Living, the Art of, 57 
Local authorities, restricted 

powers of, 80 
Loisy, Alfred, 276 
Loubet, President, 25, 176 
Loucheur, M., 65, 77 
Louis XVI, 113, 160 

— XVIIL 85, 136, 175, 302 

— Philippe, 23, 75, 171, 175 



Illegitimacy, 46 
Illegitimate children, 51 
Illicit commissions, 218 
Immigration necessary, 56 
Income Tax, 55, 106. 138-9, 192 
Inquests, need of public, 123 
Intensive cultivation, 221 
Isvolsky, M., 93 



Jacobins, the, 167 

Jaurfes, Jean, 97, 98, 115, 169, 

233, 263, 287 
Jews, 189 ; as men of business, 

198, 201 
Joan d'Arc, 174 
Judicial System, 119 ef aeq. 

K 

Klotz, M., 208, 286 



M 

MacMahon, President, 96, 110 
Manchester Guardian, Extract 

from, 68 
Manners and social usages, 

28 
Mannesmann Bros., 90 
March, M., and Statistics, 49, 

225 
"Marseillaise," the, 38 
Marx, Karl, 171, 237, 255, 257, 

263, 273, 275 
Maupassant, Guy de, 197, 

223, 228 
Maurras, Ch,, 75, 268, 269, 

304 
M6tivier, 88 
Millerand, M., 108, 154, 237, 

256, 261 
Ministerial corruption, 151 
Mirbeau, Octave, 223 



822 



INDEX 



Modernist movement, 299-302 

Money-lending, 72 

Monopolies, State, 148 

Montalembert, 86 

Morocco, 62 

Municipal Coiincils, 78 ef seq. 

N 

Napoleon I, 35, 76, 77, 132, 
168-9 

— Ill, 23, 86, 136, 171, 183, 
230 

Napoleonic Wars, 51 

National Debt and repudia- 
tion, 285 

Nationalism, 279 

N'Goko Sanga Enterprise, 157 



Painlev6, M., 29, 140, 142, 
161 

Panama aSair, 157 

Paper manufactiorers, 65 

Paris and France, 22 

Parliament, discredit of, 111 

Parliamentarians and respon- 
sibility, 143 

Party government, 141-2 

Pascal, 292 

Patriotism, 174 et seq. 

Patronage, 152 

Pawnbroking, a municipal 
monopoly, 249 

Peasant proprietors, 220 et seq. 

Peasantry and politics, 230 

" Petit Rentier " class, 184 

Places of worship in London 
and Paris, 305 

Poincare, M. Raymond, 96, 97, 
175 

Police and public, 89 

Political conversions, 154 

— situation, 1 1 

Ponsot, Georges, 270 

Pouget, 257 

Population statistics, 44,49, 222 

Postal service, 244 



Pragmatism, 292 
Pragmatist oath, 311 
President of the Republic, 

96-8 
Professions overcrowded, 213 
Profiteers, 65 
Proletarian ideas, 232 
Proletariat, meaning of the 

term, 10 ; dictatorship of, 

273, 278 
Property, subdivision of, 220 
Proportional representation, 

115 
Prosperity and cost of living, 

41 
Protection, 64, 227 
Provinces and Departments, 

172-3 
— and races, 173 
Public schools and universities, 

29 



R 



Radical Party, 1 38 et seq. 
Radicaux Socialistes, 138-141 
Railway and tramway system, 

239-246 
Ransome, Arthur, 274 (note) 
Rationalism, 315 e< seq. 
Reactionaries, 268 et seq. 
Reconstruction, 40, 57 
— of devastated areas, 69 
Referendum, the, 179 
Reinach, Jos., 268 
ReMgion and the War, 307 
Religious districts, 305 

— orders, 133-36 
Renan, 291 
Rentiers, 28 

Revolution, results of the, 
164, 169, 174-177 

— of 1848, 183 
Ribot, M., 92, 96, 208 
Rights of Man, Declaration of, 

170, 181 
Robespierre, 167 
Roubaix spianers, 66 



INDEX 



323 



Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 36, 

166 
Rousset Case, the, 91 
Bouvier, M., 169, 208 
Royer-CoUard, 86 
Rural life, 223 



S 



Saar VaUey Coalfields, 69, 282 

Saint-Simon, 76 

Sanitation, neglect of, 114, 

209-12 
Secret police, 86 
Senate, election of, 99 ; powers 

of, 105-7 
Sentimentalism, 36 
Shop-stewards, 284 
Small earnings, 214 
Small property, 183 
a subject for French 

literatvire, 197 
Sobriety and drunkenness, 22 
Socialism, Syndicalism, and 

State Capitalism, 236 
Socialisme contre VEtat, Le, 11 
Socialist Party, 60, 111, 115, 

141, 159, 237, 261 etseq. 
Socialists and the election, 112 
Sorel, M., his theories, 255-7, 

268 
State monopolies, 246 

— and railways, 239 

— Socialism, 252 
Steeg, M., 92 
Steinheil Case, 122 
Street nomenclature, 78 
Strikes and revolution, 284 
Swinburne, A. C, 9 
Syndicalism, 266 et seq. 



Thiers, M., 95 
Thomas, Albert, 97 
Thureau-Dangin, Paul, 74 
Tipping system, 219 
Tobacco monopoly, 247 
Trains and tramways, 241, 244 
Tribunal Correctionnel, 127 
Trotsky, 93 
Tunis, 63 
Turmel, M., 124r-5 



Vandervelde, Emile, 10 (note), 

77, 101, 235, 238 
Vendue, La, 30, 172 
Verdun, 16 
Verlaine, 37 

Villain Case, the, 126, 287-8 
Viviani, M., 108-9, 154, 174, 

261, 270 
Voltaire, 36, 166, 289, 291-2 



W 

Waldeck-Rousseau, 26, 133, 

145, 256, 261 
War and the population, 50 
Wealth, distribution of, 42 
Western Railway of France, 

239—41 262 
Wetterl6,'the Abb6, 180 
•' White Terror, the," 85 
Wilson, President, 281-3 
Wine, 40 
Wine-growers' lives, 68 

revolt, 15 

Wine-growing districts, life in 

231 



Tangier, Visit of the ex-Kaiser 

to, 63 
Temps, Le, 181 



Zola, Emile, 197, 223 



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